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KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ■ DALLAS 
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AN INTRODUCTION 



KANT'S CRITICAL 
PHILOSOPHY 



BY 
GEORGE TAPLEY WHITNEY 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 

AND 
PHILIP HOWARD FOGEL 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 



N*m fnrk 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1914 

All rights reserved 






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Copyright, 1914. 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1914. 



M4V 2i iS/4 



©CI.A374159 



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PREFACE 

This little volume has arisen from a need felt in con- 
nection with undergraduate instruction on Kant. Too 
often Kant has been taught as merely a part in a scheme 
of philosophy, or as having significance only as a stage 
in that development of thought which the History of 
Philosophy presents. The consequence of this treatment 
has been the warping of his views to suit the general 
scheme. In opposition to this, we have attempted in this 
statement of the Critique of Pure Reason to bring out 
the many-sidedness of his system in itself, and for itself, 
and to show its significance as more than merely a pro- 
paedeutic for further reflections. 

We have been painfully conscious of the divergent and 
even sometimes conflicting tendencies of Kant's thought, 
and in the opportunities which it thus offers for different 
interpretations. We have not ignored these conflicting 
tendencies in his thought for the sake of a unified inter- 
pretation, but since we wanted to present what Kant 
said, rather than what we think Kant ought to have said 
in order to be consistent, we have thought it better to 
present them as we found them. 

In the observations that we have made from time to 
time, we have taken those aspects of the diverging tend- 
encies which seemed to us to have been involved in his 
fundamental position, and upon which he seemed to in- 
sist with emphasis. 

v 



VI PREFACE 

The selections from Kant and the observations that 
have been made, we believe, give a true statement of 
Kant. We make no pretense of giving a complete inter- 
pretation of him. We have tried merely to give a state- 
ment of him which would bring out the continuity of the 
thought, which would emphasize the problems he con- 
sidered and how they arise, — in short, a statement which 
ought in some degree to meet the needs of the ordinary 
student. 

In the treatment itself, Kant's own language is very 
largely taken. The translation used principally is that 
by Max Mueller, though at times we have made use of 
the Meiklejohn translation, or have made our own trans- 
lation. 

Glossaries of technical terms as used by Kant are fre- 
quently unsatisfactory, and so in the index we mention 
the principal terms and refer to Kant's own definition 
of them in the text. 

Princeton, N. J. ; 1914. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Historical Development of Kant's Problem i 

Introduction 18 

Transcendental Esthetic 26 

Metaphysical Exposition of Space 27 

Transcendental Exposition of Space 29 

Metaphysical Exposition of Time 31 

Transcendental Exposition of Time 32 

General Observations on Transcendental iEsthetic ... $$ 

Conclusion of the Transcendental Esthetic 37 

Transcendental Logic 43 

Transcendental Analytic 46 

Book I. Analytic of Concepts 47 

Discovery of the Categories 48 

Transcendental Deduction of the Categories 54 

Subjective Deduction 56 

Of the Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition 57 

Of the Synthesis of Reproduction in Imagination . . 58 

Of the Synthesis of Recognition in Concepts 60 

Objection Deduction 63 

Book II. Analytic of Principles 100 

Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding 100 

Principles of the Pure Understanding 101 

Axioms of Intuition 103 

Anticipations of Perception 104 

Analogies of Experience 106 

Postulates of Empirical Thought in General 127 

Refutation of Idealism 131 

Transition to the Transcendental Dialectic 139 

Transcendental Dialectic 141 

The Paralogisms of Pure Reason 150 

vii 



Vlll CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Refutation of Mendelssohn's Proof of the Perma- 
nence of the Soul 160 

Conclusion of the Solution of the Psychological 
Paralogism 170 

General Note on the Transition from Rational Psy- 
chology to Cosmology 172 

The Antinomy of Pure Reason 177 

The Ideal of Pure Reason 196 

Criticism of the Ontological Proof for the Existence 
of God 201 

Criticism of the Cosmological Proof for the Existence 
of God 205 

Criticism of the Physi co-Theological Proof for the 
Existence of God 208 

The Regulative Use of the Ideas 212 



KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 



HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF KANT'S 
PROBLEM 

Modern philosophy may be divided into two great 
periods: before, and after Kant. 

In the Pre-Kantian period there are two opposed lines 
of development, Englis h^nipirieism and Continental 
r ationalism. Contine ntal r ati onalism is based on the 
pri nciple that all true know ledge jgjieri yed from re ason 
and not from exp erience. More precisely stated, the 
Continental school maintained that there are in the 
mind, prior to all experience, inn ate ideas and principle s 
as self-evident as the axioms of mathematics. From 
these ideas and principles, they held, it is possible to de- 
duce a se£ureineta^lry^icjust as Euclid deduced his 
system of geometry. 

To understand the reason for this position, one must 
remember that mathematics was the dominant science 

of the time, and that Descartes and Leibniz were m ather 

7 v^. ■ — ■ — - — — — — 

maticians of n ote who had made important contributions 
to the science. Under such conditions it was riatux aJ 
for_them to look upon the m athematic al mp^^ qg fVlf> 
o nly method of attaining true knowledg e. Truejjiowl- 
edge. is univexsaljjioVjiecessary; and mat hematics fur- 
nishes such knowledge. The mathematician does not 
have to prove in the case of each particular triangle that 
the three angles are equal to two right angles. He proves 



2 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

its truth from the very nature of the triangle and hence 
his proof has universal validity. Therefore the rationalist 
concludes that experience is not the basis of the proofs 
by means of which we arrive at necessary conclusions; 
and yet necessary conclusions alone deserve the name of 
knowledge. The rationalist does not deny that we get 
valuable information from experience; but he denies that 
such information is knowledge in the strict sense of the 
term. It lacks universality and necessity and, in so far, 
lacks the characteristics of true knowledge. 

Rationalism, therefore, implies the application of the 
mathematical method to philosophy. The scholastic 
doctrine of essence seems to make this method feasible. 
The scholastic doctrine of essence holds that in addition 
to the qualities of a thing, there exists a substance or 
essence from which the qualities necessarily arise. The 
existence of a certain essence involves the existence of 
certain qualities. Therefore a knowledge of the essences 
of things would make it possible to deduce their proper- 
ties with strict universality and necessity without any 
reference to experience. This knowledge the rationalists 
seek to validate by a general doctrine of innate ideas. 
On the basis of this doctrine and in this way all true 
knowledge may be derived. 

The truth or falsity of the rationalistic doctrine is a 
question of fact. Locke insists that we have no knowl- 
edge of the essences of real things. We know the es- 
sences in the case of mathematics because we are dealing 
with objects of our own creation. When we are con- 
cerned with real objects, we are entirely dependent upon 
experience. Obviously we have no innate ideas, for 



HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF KANT S PROBLEM 3 

were such ideas in the mind from birth, it would be pos- 
sible for us to deduce everything with certainty and 
ease without any reference to experience. Knowledge, 
as a matter of fact, is gained slowly and laboriously by 
means of experience; whereas it would be apparent 
almost at once were such ideas a part of our mental 
equipment. The slow growth, the imperfections, and 
the limited extent of our knowledge show the falsity of 
the doctrine of innate ideas. 

In the light of his criticism of innate ideas, Locke, 
in the first book of the Essay, says that knowledge arises 
when the faculties of mind act on the materials fur- 
nished by sense. Unfortunately Locke later interprets 
this to mean that all knowledge is furnished by sense 
experience. Sense experience, as given, now becomes 
everything and synthetic activity is ignored. The em- 
pirical doctrine, therefore, makes its appearance not as 
the logical result of sound criticism of rationalism but 
as a reaction against it. 

The empirical doctrine, in the form now being con- 
sidered, looks upon the mind as passive. It has no knowl- 
edge until something happens to it. It is empty until 
experience comes, and after experience has made its 
contribution, mind can add nothing. At most it can 
only order the sense-given material. Kant points out 
the fundamental defect in this view when he proves that 
without some activity, no experience is possible. We 
may be unconscious of the basal activities underlying 
consciousness, but the results prove their presence. 

Locke compares the mind to a chamber with windows, 
the windows are the senses and through them knowledge 



4 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

comes into the mind. External objects, as it were, im- 
press themselves on mind as a seal impresses wax. Up 
to this point mind is passive, but after sensations are 
aroused, it remembers, compares, desires, and wills. 
In a word, all knowledge depends upon experience either 
inner or outer. 

All ideas originally given by sensation and reflection 
are simple and unrelated. From these simple ideas com- 
plex ideas are formed. In the second book of the Essay, 
Locke applies this doctrine to the various facts of ex- 
perience to see if it will stand the test. On the whole, he 
seems to be satisfied with the result. We must now ask 
if he is as successful as he thinks. 

In the phenomenal world as known by us, there are 
objects which we look upon as causing sensations in us 
and to which we refer those sensations as qualities. We 
never think in terms of subjective sensations, but in 
terms of objects and the laws of objects. The senses 
might give us information concerning the qualities of 
objects, but there is no sense by which we can perceive 
the thing that has the qualities. Locke admits that here 
is an element that does not come from experience. The 
idea of substance, he says, is the idea of an unknown 
something which supports the qualities, in which the 
qualities inhere, and in which they are united. We can 
not think of qualities as existing by themselves, we are 
forced to think of them as relating to and supported by 
some thing. This is what the idea of substance means 
according to Locke. 

The significance of Locke's admission becomes appar- 
ent when we consider the part which things play in our 



HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OE KANT S PROBLEM 5 

world. The order of sensations is changed by many 
accidental circumstances and all would be chaos if we 
had no objective principles of order. We have an ordered 
world because we refer sensations to things which are 
supposed to have objective relations with one another. 
Without such an objective order no experience would be 
possible. 

Locke assumes the existence of a real material world, 
and he often takes the position that this world is correctly 
represented by the primary qualities. It is a world of 
solid objects, extended in space and capable of motion. 
At other times he says that the real essences of things 
are unknown. His reason for asserting the existence of a 
material world is to be found in the fact that sensations 
are forced upon us and he assumes that they must be 
caused by material things. 

The preceding argument is based on the assumption 
that we know causality as an ontological principle. If 
that principle can not be derived from experience, in his 
sense of the term, Locke so far as he is an empiricist, 
has no right to employ it. Now the principle of causality 
asserts that everything which comes into existence must 
have a cause. Hume and Kant will show that this prin- 
ciple can not be derived from sense experience.* Fur- 

* This statement must not be interpreted to assert that Hume 
and Kant hold identical positions, nor does it assert that sense 
experience is in no wise involved in causality. The consideration 
of this text as a whole will tend to indicate that Kant actually 
derives knowledge of the existence of causality from a thorough 
analysis of the world of objective experience, even though experi- 
ence does not show the real nature of causality as an ontological 
principle. 



6 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

thermore, even if we were to grant that the principle could 
be derived from experience, we could still assert that it 
gives us no information concerning the nature of a cause 
outside the field of experience. The cause may be God 
as Berkeley maintains, and even if it is some physical 
existence, the theory of representative perception gives 
us no right to say that some of our ideas are like the cause 
while others are not. 

The empirical doctrine does not warrant the assertion 
of the existence of God. Locke recognizes that this is so, 
and proceeds to prove God's existence in a rationalistic 
manner as follows. From eternity there must have been 
something; else nothing could now exist. Suppose there 
is no eternal being, then by hypothesis at one time there 
would have been nothing, but out of nothing comes 
nothing. Hence nothing could have existed at any time 
if at one time there had been nothing. Therefore God 
exists. 

From the preceding discussion it will be apparent that 
Locke's philosophy contains many diverse elements. 
He assumes the existence of a material world on the one 
hand and a number of isolated selves on the other. Then 
he adopts the physiological method to get some connec- 
tion between these separate elements. Whenever nec- 
essary, rational principles are called in to aid experience. 
Material things act upon the organs of sense and pro- 
duce atomic sensations. The self, observing and com- 
paring these sensations furnishes all knowledge of rela- 
tions including those of space and time. 

It is possible to explain the presence of contradictory 
elements in Locke's philosophy as follows. Locke's 



HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF KANT'S PROBLEM 7 

ideal of knowledge was rationalistic. Like the rational- 
ists, he takes mathematics as an example of what knowl- 
edge should be. But he differs from the rationalists in 
holding this ideal to be unrealizable except in math- 
ematics and morals. He holds that in mathematics and 
morals we make our objects, and so have a complete 
knowledge of them. Hence in respect to them we can 
deduce the properties with strict necessity. In all other 
branches of knowledge, on the contrary, we are dealing 
with objects independent of mind. In the case of real 
objects, we do not know the essences because our facul- 
ties have serious limitations. Therefore, when dealing 
with matters of fact, it becomes necessary to give up 
deduction in favor of experience. Experience does not 
enable us to make universal statements, but it is our 
only substitute for the more satisfactory rational knowl- 
edge. Thus, though Locke is rationalistic in so far as 
his ideal of knowledge is concerned, he is forced reluc- 
tantly to admit that this ideal can be realized only in 
cases where we make our own objects. As no other 
course is possible, he takes experience as a last resort. 

Before considering Hume, who exerted a profound 
influence on Kant, we must notice some of Berkeley's 
conclusions, as they throw considerable light on Hume's 
general position. 

Berkeley reduces matter to simple ideas plus the notion 
of some cause. This was not very difficult after Locke's 
discussion of essences. Locke there took the position 
that all qualities depend upon unknown essences. It was 
an easy step from this view to Berkeley's position that 
matter does not exist. Since spirit is the only cause 



8 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

known by us, Berkeley affirms that all ideas not produced 
by finite spirits are caused by God. These ideas and 
their order constitute what we call nature. 

The general view held by Berkeley is a result of three 
main assumptions. If one adopts the standpoint of 
representative perception, ideas coming into mind, by the 
way of the sense organs, are connected with external 
reality by a very slender thread. All that we require is 
some cause capable of producing these sensations. On 
this point of view, as Descartes admits, the material 
world might be annihilated and make no difference in 
our knowledge unless our subjective experience were 
changed. Berkeley discards matter because it is un- 
known and its causal activity inconceivable. But al- 
though he holds material causality to be inconceivable, 
Berkeley assumes the principle of causality as a self- 
evident truth. It becomes one of his most useful instru- 
ments. Spirits cause all ideas. God produces our sensa- 
tions, the atomic material of our world. Spirits are 
assumed as abstract substances capable of producing 
and receiving ideas. Finite spirits add external relations 
to the given atomic and relationless materials of sense. 
Sensations are neither causes nor effects of other sensa- 
tions, but they come with a degree of uniformity which 
we can make use of in our conduct. They are signs or 
indications of what may be expected to come.* 

The main points of the preceding discussion may be 
summarized as follows. After denying the existence of 
matter, Berkeley retains the physiological method and 

* This view is very much like one phase of Hume's doctrine of 
causality. 



HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF KANT'S PROBLEM 9 

with it all the machinery of representative perception. 
Causality is accepted as a self-evident principle in spite 
of our inability to understand how physical things could 
produce any effect. And finally, Berkeley assumes the 
existence of selves as abstract substances despite the 
fact that such substantial spirits are open to all the 
criticisms which he makes against material substances. 

Hume is inclined to take a position contradictorily 
opposed to the subjective idealism of Berkeley. We 
venture this assertion in face of the fact that his outcome 
is unsatisfactory, mainly because he falls back upon the 
untenable principles of his predecessors. The general 
tone of Hume's doctrine tends toward phenomenalism. 
In accordance with this tendency, he attempts to over- 
come the false duality of ideas and objects. He would 
take concrete experience for his point of departure. It 
is apparent that he has no desire to adopt the theory of 
representative perception. We see this side of Hume 
in his early statements concerning impressions and ideas. 
Here we do not seem to start from the assumption that 
ideas are subjective states of mind. We start from a 
concrete experience in which subjective and objective 
are not arbitrarily sundered and set over against each 
other. This tendency is to the fore in the more valuable 
portions of Hume's discussions concerning causality, 
self, and physical substance. Here he emphasizes the 
fact that we should study concrete experience and not 
use false abstractions as principles of explanation. We 
can not get back of experience, all our knowledge is con- 
fined to the sphere of possible experience. This point of 
view is quite in line with the spirit of Kant's philosophy. 



IO INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

Unfortunately, however, Hume is never able to free 
himself from the subjective view of knowledge and the 
physiological method. If our impressions depend upon 
the sense organs, they are separate subjective elements 
and imply an external cause. It now becomes necessary 
to adopt the doctrine of representative perception. Pro- 
ceeding in accordance with this general view, Hume bases 
his analysis of experience on the sense organs, and any 
idea not derived from sensation is pronounced false. 
Thus, Hume impelled by this point of view, adopts most 
of the erroneous assumptions of his predecessors. 

Armed with the doctrine that experiences are separate, 
and though associated are not essentially related, Hume 
proceeds to examine those principles which imply a real 
connection. In other words, he proceeds to examine 
the notion that experiences belong to a self, are related 
to a world of objects, and are necessarily connected with 
each other. 

In this examination Hume has two ends in view. First, 
he rules out everything not derived from separate ex- 
periences. Secondly, he attempts to show how the false 
ideas, thus ruled out, come into existence. 

Hume holds that all false ideas arise from the associa- 
tion of separate experiences. The physiological point 
of view led him, as we have seen, to assert the atomic 
nature of experiences. If he had not, however, in con- 
tradiction to the atomic view, held that separate ex- 
periences are related and thus associated, he could not 
have explained why things appear to us as they do. 
Without the principles of association, his philosophy 
can give no plausible account of human experience. 



HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF KANT S PROBLEM II 

Kant, as we shall see, seizes upon this truth and em- 
phasizes both the subjective and the objective principles 
of synthesis. 

If the laws of association are supposed to relate 
arbitrarily the unrelated atoms of experience, they do not 
enable Hume to account for our space and time expe- 
rience. In the end he is forced reluctantly to admit that 
these ideas refer to the manner in which objects appear 
to us. He is driven to this conclusion by the following 
considerations. Each impression is a separate fact re- 
sulting from a particular sense and there is no special 
sense to give space and time.* As all our experiences 
are in time, and all our impressions of outer sense are 
referred to space, or to things in space, these ideas can 
not be explained away. Of the idea of substance it is 
possible to say that it is an idea produced by a false 
association of ideas. Obviously, however, space and 
time resist this method of explanation. No grouping of 
non-spatial and non-temporal units can produce space 
and time.f 

Hume's final position concerning space and time is an 
inconsistent compromise. It is, in substance, as follows. 
Nothing but impressions disposed in a certain manner 
exist. As the ideas of space and time are not ideas 

* Space and time are indivisible wholes and can not come from 
separate experiences. They are not made up of parts, conse- 
quently, if given by separate impressions, each impression would 
have to give the whole of space or time; but this is impossible. 

t The idea of substance may be the idea of something behind 
the world of perception and gives little trouble, but in space and 
time, we are dealing with factors involved in the world of percep- 
tion. 



12 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

of separate impressions, they must be ideas of the manner 
or order in which impressions are arranged. But the 
manner in which impressions are arranged is obviously 
not a separate impression. Hume's view here is incon- 
sistent with his conception of experience as atomic; it, 
however, is entirely consistent with the phenomenalistic 
tendency in his thought. Kant's solution of these prob- 
lems is more satisfactory. 

When we turn to Hume's penetrating examination of 
the causal principle, several points should be emphasized. 
Among the most important of these is his insistence that 
temporal conjunction is a necessary part of the idea. 
This in itself would make him deny the possibility of 
reducing causality to logical explanation — a reduction 
that had been attempted by the rationalists. After an 
examination of several arguments concerning the nature 
of causality which the rationalists had put forward, 
Hume concludes that they are all fallacious. The prin- 
ciple of causality can not be demonstrated by reason; 
nor is it intuitively certain. It is impossible to prove 
its necessity either as a general principle or in particular 
cases. The knowledge of this relation is not, in any in- 
stance, attained by reasonings a priori* Let an object 
be presented to a man of ever so strong natural reason 
and abilities; if that object be entirely new to him, he 
will not be able, by the most accurate examination of 
its sensible qualities, to discover any of its causes or 
effects. Adam, though his rational faculties be sup- 
posed, at the very first, entirely perfect, could not 

* Philosophical Works of David Hume. 4 vols. Boston, Little, 
Brown & Co. Edinburgh, A. & C. Black. 1854, vol. 4, pp. 30-32. 






HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF KANT'S PROBLEM 13 

have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of 
water, that it would suffocate him; or from the light and 
warmth of fire that it would consume him. Furthermore, 
every effect is a distinct event from its cause. In vain, 
therefore, should we pretend to determine any single 
event, or infer any cause or effect, without the assistance 
of observation and experience.* Reason, therefore, is 
unable to discover any causal connection. 

Experience, just as little as reason, enables us to dis- 
cover any necessary connection between events. From 
experience we never learn anything more than that, as 
a matter of fact, events follow each other in a certain 
order. Against the contention that we are at least 
conscious of an internal power whereby the will is able 
to produce bodily movements or call up ideas, Hume 
retorts that these instances of connection are quite as 
baffling as any others. We do not in the least under- 
stand the means whereby the mind exerts an influence 
on the body, and we are just as little acquainted with 
any power in the soul which would enable it to produce 
ideas voluntarily. In this connection Hume asks, Is 
there not here, either in a spiritual or material substance, 
or both, some secret mechanism or structure of parts, 
upon which the effect depends, and which being entirely 
unknown to us, renders the power or energy of the will 
equally unknown and incomprehensible? f 

As none of our faculties furnish the idea of necessary 

connection, how are we to explain the fact of its presence? 

Hume answers that it comes from custom or habit. In 

single instances of causality we discover only that one 

* hoc. cit., pp. 32-37. t Loc. cit., pp. 74-79. 



14 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

event follows another. Such events seem conjoined, but 
never necessarily connected. If, however, one particular 
species of events has always been conjoined with another, 
when one appears we predict the existence of the other. 
We now assume a connection between them; some power 
in the one which necessarily produces the other. Thus 
the idea of necessary connection arises from several 
instances of conjunction but never from a single case. 
But as we suppose all instances exactly alike we must 
conclude that after the repetition of similar instances, 
the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of 
one event, to expect its usual attendant. We then feel a 
new impression, to wit, a customary connection in the 
thought or imagination between one object and its usual 
attendant; and this sentiment is the original of that idea 
for which we seek. When we say, therefore, that one 
object is connected with another, we mean only that 
these objects have acquired a connection in our thought, 
by means of which they become proofs of each other's 
existence. 

In light of the preceding discussion, Hume now defines 
cause to be an object followed by another, and where all 
the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects 
similar to the second. Or, in other words, where, if the 
first object had not been, the second never had existed. 
The appearance of a cause always conveys the mind, by 
a customary transition, to the idea of the effect. We 
may, therefore, give another definition of cause; and 
call it, an object followed by another, and whose appear- 
ance always conveys the thought to that other. Hume 
points out that both these definitions are drawn from 



HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OP KANT 7 S PROBLEM 1 5 

circumstances foreign to the cause and that we are un- 
able to indicate anything in the cause which gives it a 
connection with the effect. We have no idea of this 
connection; nor even any distinct notion what it is we 
desire to know, when we endeavor at a conception of it. 
We say, for instance, that the vibration of this string is 
the cause of this particular sound. But what do we mean 
by that affirmation? We either mean, that this vibra- 
tion is followed by this sound, and that all similar vibra- 
tions have been followed by similar sounds: or, that this 
vibration is followed by this sound, and that, upon the 
appearance of one, the mind anticipates the senses, and 
forms immediately an idea of the other. We may con- 
sider the relation of cause and effect in either of these 
two lights; but beyond these we have no idea of it.* 

It was Hume's destructive criticism of the causal idea 
which led Kant to a new and more searching analysis of 
experience. As an outcome of his investigation, Kant 
maintains our right to employ causality as an objective 
principle. It would be a grave error, however, to suppose 
that Kant either refutes or attempts to refute most of 
Hume's contentions. Kant agrees with Hume in holding 
that the principle is not intuitively certain and that it 
can not be demonstrated by abstract logical reasoning. 
Furthermore, no analysis of particular events is able to 
show why they must be connected as they are. There- 
fore, Hume and Kant are in agreement in the contention 
that although mind instinctively connects things as 
causally related, we have no way of knowing the real 
nature of this connection. The nature of real causal 
* Loc. cit., pp. 84-89. 



1 6 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

activity appears to both to be incomprehensible. Hume, 
however, just because he adopted the physiological 
point of view, had to deny that causality is a true con- 
stitutive principle in the phenomenal world. Because 
he looks upon knowledge as a subjective process, Hume 
is unable to take advantage of the deeper implications 
of his own critical work. Kant, benefiting by Hume's 
mistake, gave the causal principle full significance and 
necessity as a constitutive principle within the world 
of experience. He saw, as against Hume, that the prin- 
ciple is necessarily involved in all our objective expe- 
rience. 

Hume is commonly supposed to have denied the ex- 
istence of the self; and indeed such denial would be the 
necessary outcome of an insistence that ideas and im- 
pressions are unrelated. But when Hume's argument 
is interpreted more sympathetically, we find in it an 
attempt to refute the substance idea of mind. In opposi- 
tion to the substance view, Hume justly holds that 
mind or self is to be found only in the unity of experience, 
and not as a substance back of such experiences. If we 
look upon Hume from this point of view, it becomes evi- 
dent that he marks a great advance over his predecessors, 
and had it not been for his physiological method, he 
would have reached a position similar to the one finally 
worked out by Kant. 

Hume's criticism of material substances is similar to 
his criticism of mental substances. It should have led 
him to deny the existence of any abstract separation 
between ideas and things. But instead of appreciating 
the true outcome of his argument, he is again misled by 



HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF KANT S PROBLEM 1 7 

his physiological method and denies that perceptions 
have any continuous existence. 

On the whole, Hume's conclusions are sceptical. He 
holds that it is impossible for us to solve the ultimate 
questions of metaphysics; it is not given us to know 
essences and ultimate causes. But if Hume's philosophy 
is called sceptical, one must after all remember that it 
was the kind of scepticism capable of being developed 
into the critical philosophy of Kant. Most of Hume's 
difficulties can be traced back to the position that knowl- 
edge is subjective. Furthermore, we must not forget 
that this position is in direct contradiction with much 
of his own work. Unfortunately, Hume could not free 
himself from the dogmatic assumptions of his predeces- 
sors. A Kant is necessary to achieve what had been a 
task too difficult for Hume. 

The English and Continental lines of development 
meet in Kant. He had been trained in the rationalism 
of Leibniz. But Hume's conclusions started him from 
his dogmatic slumbers and led him to attempt a recon- 
ciliation of empiricism and rationalism. To this recon- 
ciliation we now proceed.* 

*In connection with this introduction, Cf. Leslie Stephen, 
English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. Vol. I. Andrew 
Seth, Scottish Philosophy. Norman Smith, Studies in the Car- 
tesian Philosophy. 



INTRODUCTION 

The methods which metaphysic has hitherto employed 
have repeatedly brought it to a standstill because they 
have been inadequate to lead it to a real solution of its 
problems. Hitherto it has been supposed that all our 
knowledge must conform to the objects. This procedure 
has been inadequate, for it has always resulted in the 
impossibility of establishing any necessary certitude in 
knowledge. The experiment therefore ought to be made, 
whether we should not succeed better with the problems 
of metaphysic, by assuming that the objects must con- 
form to our mode of cognition, for this would better agree 
with the demanded possibility of an a priori knowledge of 
them, which is to settle something about objects, before 
they are given us. Just as with Copernicus, so here. 
Copernicus found himself unable to get on in the explana- 
tion of the movements of the heavenly bodies, so long 
as he assumed that all the stars turned round the specta- 
tor, and then tried whether he could not succeed better 
by assuming the spectator to be turning round and the 
stars to be at rest. In the same way, Kant proposes to 
change the point of view and make the intelligibility of 
objects dependent not upon the objects themselves, but 
upon activities manifesting themselves through the 
medium of the conscious subject. When Kant speaks 
of the Copernican revolution which he brings about in 
thought, he does not intend to_r ule out ex perience as a 

18 ^"~~ 



INTRODUCTION 1 9 

f actor in knnwlqdgp It is against the old dogmatism 
which asserted that objects are known to us as they are, 
that Kant's revolution is directed. Just as the Coper- 
nican assumption of the movement of the spectator 
instead of that of the objects perceived, was revolution- 
ary, so Kant's introduction into phenomenal knowledge 
of jjie factors whi chcome through the medium of the 
conscious subject, isa protest against the^lddoctrine 
that knowledge represents things as they really are. But 
the analogy does not end here. While the assumption 
of the motion of the spectator does not change the ap- 
pearance of motion of the fixed stars, it changed the 
explanation of the apparent motion by the assertion that 
the fixed stars are at rest. Just so, Kant's view is that 
not the objects in themselves but rather the noumenal 
conditions of consciousness contribute the general struc- 
ture of our experience, and hence that this structure 
does not represent the real nature of things in them- 
selves. Science is no longer in danger of being found 
illusory because our impressions may not correspond to 
reality yW S cience may nnyr hp rryn^Hpr pd to be an exact 
inte rpretation of phenomena, which are wh at we kno w, 
an d which ax e all that we ran really know. That is, 
Kant's Copernican revolution consists in the replacing 
of the dogmatical by the critical method.* 

That all our knowledge begins with experience is cer- 
tain. If this were not so, how should the faculty of knowl- 
edge be roused into activity so that we may compare, 

* Cf. J. E. Creighton, Philosophical Review, Vol. xxii, March, 
1913, pp. 133-50. Norman Kemp Smith, Mind, New Series, 
Vol. xxii, October, 1913, pp. 549-51. 



connect or separate objects, and thus make them intelli- 
gible. In respect to time, therefore, no knowledge 
within us is antecedent to experience, but all knowledge 
begins with it. But although all our knowledge begins 
with experience, it does not follow that it all arises from 
experience. It is quite possible that even our empirical 
experience is a compound of that which we receive 
through impressions, and of that which our own faculty 
of knowledge (incited only by sensuous impressions), 
supplies from itself.* 

This gives rise to another question, whether there 
exists a knowledge mde^nd^nljoj^xperience^ and even 
ol^inmpressions of the senses. Such knowledge would 
be called a priori and distinguished from empirical 
knowledge, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, 
in experience. The term a priori is "still open to am- 
biguity, for it might mean the inference from a general 
rule — such general rule, however, being after all derived 
from experience. Kant's meaning of a priori which he 
sometimes calls the pure a priori is that knowledge which 
is _absolutelv independent of a ll_experience. 

How do we recognize a priori knowledge? Any prop- 
osition which is thought together with its necessity, is 
a priori. Furthermore, any judgment wliichjs^iQuglit 
with strict universality^ so that no exception is admitted 
as possible, ^fe-alscfa priori. Experience can give only 
future probability and never necessity or universality, 
that is, a priority. They are inseparable from eacEother, 

*This statement should be compared with, and read in the 
light of Kant's later criticism of the existence of a substantial self 
apart from experience. Vide note, p. 30. 



INTRODUCTION 21 

for that which is necessary must be universal. Necessity, 
therefore , and strict universality are safe criteria of 
knowledge a priori. 

That there really exist in our knowledge such neces- 
sary, and in the strictest sense universal, and therefore 
pure judgments a priori, is ea^Jv^shomi. A proposition 
from geometry would be a case in question: for example, 
the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right 
angles. 

In order to make significant the statement that pure 
judgments a priori exist, and that they are the forms 
by which necessary knowledge becomes possible, a fur- 
ther consideration becomes necessary. This consider- 
ation is, Whatsorj of judgment ^ ^ ^at is b ^th a prio ri 
and of significancejorjiej cessarv k nowledg e?. (i 
^Kant points out that in all judgments a two-fold rela- 
tion is possible between subject and predicate. Either 
the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something 
contained (though covertly) in the concept A; or, B lies 
outside the sphere of the concept A, though somehow 
connected with it. In the former case the judgment 
is called analytical, and in the latter synthetical. Analyt- 
ical judgments are therefore those in which the connection 
of the predicate with the subject is conceived through 
identity, while others in which that connection is con- 
ceived without identity, may be called synthetical. The 
former might be called illustrating, the latter expanding 
judgments, because in theTormer nothin^_is_added by the 
precjicate to the concept of the subject, biit-the^Geneept 
i s only divided ir jto 1>fQ co^ti*"^* - rpnrgpts which were 
always conceived as existing in it, though confusedly; 



I>^ 






22 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

while the latter add to the concept of the subject a 
predicate not conceived_as__existing_within it, and not to 
be extracted from ur by any process of mere analysis. 
For instance, all bodies are extended, is an analytical 
judgment. The concept, body, implies extension and it 
need only be analyzed for one to become conscious of the 
elements contained in it, in order to find that predicate. 
In the judgment, all bodies are heavy, the predicate is 
not contained in the concept which forms the subject, 
but is synthetically added to it. 

All mathematical judgments are synthetical and are 
also judgments a priori, and not empirical, because they 
carry along with them necessity, which can never be 
deduced from experience. Natural science contains 
synthetic judgments a priori as principles. For example, 
in all changes of the material world, the quantity of 
lnatteFrema2n2^SstanTf°br, in all communication of 
motion, action and reaction are equal. It is clear not 
only that^b^tBTconv^y~n^cesslty, and that, therefore, 
their origin is a priori, but also that they are synthetical 
propositions. For the concept of ma jU££jdo€«-4iQLiiec- 
essarily involve its permanency, but only its presence 
mthe space whic h it fills. "We, therefore, go "Beyond the 
concept of matter in order to join something to it a 
priori, which was not before conceived in it. The prop- 
osition is, therefore, not analytical but synthetical and 
yet a priori, and the same applies to the other proposi- 
tions of the pure part of natural science. Metaphysic by 
its very nature is meant to contain s y^^tir^ Trrf 0W lA/{^ 
q^riori. Its object is to expand our knowledge a priori. 
This has led to the practice in metaphysic of going so 



INTRODUCTION 23 

far be yond a given concept that _experipnre itsdj^canjiot 
follow us: as, for instance, in the proposition that the 
world must have a first beginning. Thus, according at 
least to its intentions, metaphysic consists merely of 
synthetical propositions a priozi. 

Kant believes that" much is gained if we can bring a 
number of questions under one general problem. This 
problem would be, How are syn thet ical judgment s a 
prio ri possi ble? It would involv e^ three subsidiary ques- 
tions, Is pure mathematical science possible.' Is~pure 
natural science possible? and, Is metaphysical science 
possible? The foregoing paragraph points out how he 
held mathematical and natural science not only to be 
possible but also to be actual sin ce each con tains fun- 
d amental principles which are universal and necessar y, 
and, therefore, a priori. But wi th metaphysical science 
the casellas beeriliifTerent. Investigations in this field 
have hitherto led to conclusions which have lacked 
universality and necessity, for it has been possible, 
with equalvajidity to reach directly contradi ctory c on- 
elusions. The reason for this plight of metaphysic has 
been that the attempt has always been made to deter- 
mine the nature and constitution of reality through the 
pur e activit y of the underst anding, independently of 
Experience, it has been supposed that propositions such 
as that matter neither comes into nor goes out of exist- 
ence, can be determined by mere thinking. The result 
was that they have remained nothing but propositions, 
without a necessary basis of certitude. 

These unsatisfactory results of metaphysical specula- 
tions will be found to arise out of a misconception of the 



24 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

real problem. The real problem is, How are synthetic 
judgrnsnts M^Jwiori possible? _which means, By what 
method, and how far is it possible through pure reason 
(a priori) to attain to a knowledge of objects? For, 
synthetic judgments, as over against analytical judg- 
ments — which have only logical validity — , are judgments 
which have objective validity. In other words, the real 
problem is, In what way is it possible that what is 
considered self-evident on the basis of pure thought is 
also valid for objective phenomenal reality? That is, 
can the propositions of pure~TmdiTstancLing be found 
to have objective, as well as merely logical valid- 
ity? ^^ 

The solution of the problem as thus stated involves 
transcendental philosophy. Trans cende ntal jiulo^ophy 
deals withlkaLasfiect o f knowled ge- which can mtbfijgven 
hy pypfriewp h/,lf - ™v?t fin™* f yn ™ th e- side of the subject. . 
and it is this aspect of knowledge also which is taken up 
in a crjtiqiie_xii^uj^j^ason. 

A critique of pure reason, in order to be systematically 
complete, must contain, first, a do^tnn^oXthe_ekments, 
and then, a doctrine of the metho^o^pjurcjejiSQn. In the 
doctrine of the elements we will find that there are two 
stems of human knowledge, which perhaps may spring 
from a common root, unknown to us, namely s ensibj liiyv 
and undgLslmding^ objects being given by the former 
and thought by the lattery If our sensibility should con- 
tain a priori representations, constituting conditions 
under which alone objects can be given, it would belong 
to transcendental philosophy, and the doctrine of this 
transcendental sense-perception would necessarily form 



INTRODUCTION 2$ 

the first part of the doctrine of elements, because the 
conditions under which alone objects of human knowledge 
can be given must precede those under which they are 
thought. To this we now proceed. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ESTHETIC 

Entirely apart from the process by which knowledge 
reaches its objects, there is one way by which they are 
reached directly, namely, intuition.* Without intuition, 
knowledge of objects can never be reached by the human 
mind because the given (in sensibility) is a necessary ele- 
ment in that knowledge. That which is given in sensi - 
bility and is a posteriori, must be arranged and placed 
i n certain forms in order to be in telligible^ These forms 
are a priori and different in kind from sensations. 

If we deduct from the perception of objects that which 
belongs to the thinking of the understanding, namely, 
substance, force, divisibility, etc., and if we deduct like- 
wise^that which belongs to jensation, namely^ imper- 
meability^ hardness, co]oj,^rtcT7T5eTe^till remains some- 
thing of that perception — extension and form. These 
belong to pure intuition, which a priori, and even without 
a real object of the senses or of sensation, exists in the 
mind as a mere form of sensibility. 

The science of all the principles of sen sibili ty ^ priori , 
is called Transcendental *7EstheUc. This is contrasted 
with that science which treats of the principles of pure 
thought and which is called Transcendental Logics 

* Inluitirm as hprp useiL is not to be co nfused wi th ethicaL M- 
tuition, for it here means almost what is usually meant by the 
term pe rception . Some translators of Kant use the term per- 
ception for Kant's word Anschauu ng, which is usually translated 
intuition. 

26 



TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC 27 

In the Transcendental JEsthetic, Kant first isolates 
sensibility by separating everything which the under- 
standing adds by means of its concepts, so that nothing 
remains but empincaHntuition. Secondly, he separates 
from sensibility all that belongs to sensation, so that 
nothing remains but pure in tuition, which is the mere 
form of the phenomena and which is all that sensibility 
a priori can supply. In the course of this investigation 
he finds that there are two pure forms of sensuous intui- 
tion, — Space and Tim e. 

What then are space and time? Are they real things? 
Or, are they determinations or relations between things, 
but such as would belong to them even if they were not 
perceived? Or, are they determinations which inhere 
only in the form of intuition, and consequently, in the 
constitution of our mind, without which these predicates 
of space and time can not be attributed to any thing? 

In order to answer these questions, Kant proceeds to 
an exposition of space. By exposition, he means the 
clear (though not exhaustive) presentation of that 
which pertains to a concept. An exposition is meta- 
physical when it contains that which presents the con- 
ceptas_g iven a p riori. 

Metaphysical Exposition of Space 

1. Space is not an empirical concept which has been 
derived from external experience. For in order that 
certain sensations should be referred to something out- 
side myself, that is, to something in a different part of 
space from that where I am; again, in order that I may 



28 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

be able to represent them as side by side, that is, not 
only as different, but as in different places, the representa- 
tion of space must already be there. Therefore, the 
representation of space can not be borrowed through 
experience from relations of external phenomena, but, 
on the contrary, this external experience becomes pos- 
sible only by means of the representation of space. 

2. Space forms the very fou ndation of all external 
intuitions, and so is a necessary representation a priori. 
It is possible to think away objects which are contained 
in space, b ut it is impossible_ to_Jlunk_away the space 
which cont ains them. Space must therefore be regarded 
as a condition of the possibility of phenomena, not as a 
determination produced by them; it is a representation 
a priori which necessarily lies at the basis of all external 
phenomena. 

3. Space is not a concept derived from a generalization 
of the relations of things, but isj ypurej ntiiilion. In the 
first place, one can represent to himself ^ space only^ as 
single and un itary. To speak of many spaces is to speak 
merely of parts of one and the same unitary space. These 
parts can not precede the one all-embracing space as its 
component parts, and of which it may be considered to 
be the aggregate. It is only through the all-embracing 
space that the parts can be thought. Hence it follows 
that an intuition a priori which is not empirical must 
form the foundation of all conceptions of space. 

4. Space is represented as an infinite given magnitude. 
No concept as such can be thought as containing an 
infinite number of representations. Nevertheless, space 
is so thought (for all parts of infinite space exist simul- 



TRANSCENDENTAL .ESTHETIC 29 

taneously). Consequently, the original representation 
of space is an intuition a priori, and not a concept. 



Transcendental Exposition of Space 

Kant means by a transcendental exposition, the 
establishment of a concept as a principle through which 
the possibility of further synthetic cognitions a priori 
may be understood. To achieve this aim two things are 
necessary: i, that such cognitions actually proceed from 
the given concepts, and 2, that they are possible only 
under the presupposition of a given mode of explanation 
of such concept. 

Geometry determines the properties of space synthet- 
ically, and yet a priori. What then must be the rep- 
resentation of space that such cognition may arise from 
it? It must be originally an intuition, for from mere 
concepts no propositions can be derived which go beyond 
the concepts themselves, yet this is actually done in 
geometry. That intuition, however, must be a priori, 
that is, it must exist within us before any perception of 
the object, for geometrical propositions are apodictic, 
that is, necessary, and as such can not be empirical but 
must be a priori. How then is it possible for an external 
intuition to dwell in the mind prior to the objects them- 
selves, and through which the concept of objects can 
be determined a priori. Evidently not otherwise than 
so far as it has its seat in the subject only, as the formal 
condition under which the subject is affected by the ob- 
jects and thereby is receiving an immediate representation, 
that is, intuition of them; therefore, as a form of the 



30 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

external sense in general.* It is, therefore, by our ex- 
planation only that the possibility of geometry as a 
synthetical science a priori becomes intelligible. As a 
result of the foregoing, Kant asserts that it is only from 
the human standpoint that we can speak of space, ex- 
ternal objects, etc. By this he means that space condi- 
tions have no significance for objects in themselves. 
Nevertheless, under the conditions of human experience 
all objects must be space conditioned. Therefore not 
only can objects be perceived, but through space, apodic- 
tic conclusions can also be drawn concerning them. The 
apodictic character of the conclusions comes from the 
a priority of space, and since this is only the form through 
which the objects are perceived, it follows that apodictic 
conclusions can be drawn only concerning objects as 
they appear to us, that is, external phenomena, and never 
concerning objects in themselves. 

* Here Kant seems to be employing a conception of the con- 
scious self as a substantial entity which precedes and makes pos- 
sible the concrete experience of a world of objects. That Kant 
does not consistently adhere to this view of the conscious self, 
is indicated by the general development of his doctrine, and in 
particular in his objective deduction of the categories, in his 
refutation of idealism as well as in his criticism of the rational 
psychologists. Instead of maintaining that the self is a substantial 
entity, his dominant position seems to be that since the self is 
conscious, and since our consciousness is always of objects, then 
these two phases stand in inner mutual relation to each other. 
That is, that it is a mistake to attribute temporal priority to either 
the self or the world in space and time which we call its objects. 
This consideration, however, must not be thought to carry with 
it the denial that the noumenal conditions of the self may precede 
concrete experience. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ^ESTHETIC 3 1 



Metaphysical Exposition of Time 

1. Time is not an empirical concept deduced from any 
experience, for neither co-existence nor succession would 
enter into our perception, if the representation of time 
were not given a priori. Only when this representation 
a priori is given, can we imagine that certain things 
happen at the same time (simultaneously) or at different 
times (successively). 

2. Time is a necessary representation on which all 
intuitions depend. We can think away particular phe- 
nomena out of time, but we can not think away time 
itself (as the general condition of their possibility). 
Therefore time is given a priori. 

3. Time is not a general concept, but a pure form of 
sensuous intuition. Different times are parts only of 
one and the same time. The proposition that different 
times can not exist at the same time can not be deduced 
from any general concept. Such a proposition is synthet- 
ical, and can not be deduced from mere concepts. It is 
contained immediately in the intuition and representa- 
tion of time. 

4. To say that time is infinite means only that every 
definite quantity of time is possible only by limitations 
of one time which one time forms the foundation of all 
times. The original representation of time must there- 
fore be given as unlimited. But when the parts them- 
selves and every quantity of an object can be represented 
as determined by limitation only, the whole representa- 
tion can not be given by concepts (for in that case the 



32 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

partial representations come first), but it must be founded 
on immediate intuition. 



Transcendental Exposition of Time 

On time and its a priori necessity depends also the 
possibility of apodictic principles of the relations of 
time. Among such principles are the concept of change 
and with it the concept of motion (as change of place). 
These are possible only through and in the representa- 
tion of time. If time were not intuitive a priori, no 
concept, whatever it be, could make us understand the 
possibility of change, that is, a connection of contradic- 
torily opposed predicates. Time in the form of change 
makes intelligible the possibility of two objects occupying 
one and the same place. In the same way, it is possible 
to conceive the same object as having now one, and then 
the other of two contradictorily opposed qualities. Our 
concept of time, therefore, exhibits the possibility of as 
many synthetical cognitions a priori as are found in the 
general doctrine of motion. 

As in the case of space, so here, after ending the meta- 
physical and transcendental expositions of time, Kant 
draws certain conclusions. The world constituted in 
time is an empirically real world only, and has no claim 
to absolute reality. Time is nothing but the form of our 
internal intuition. Without the peculiar condition of our 
sensibility time vanishes, because it is not inherent in 
the objects but only in the subject that perceives them. 
Time and space therefore are two sources of knowledge 
from which various a priori synthetical cognitions can be 



TRANSCENDENTAL .ESTHETIC 33 

derived. But these sources of knowledge a priori (being 
merely conditions of our sensibility) fix their own limits 
in that they can refer to objects only in so far as they are 
considered as phenomena, but can not represent things 
as they are in themselves. Phenomena are the only 
field in which they are valid; beyond this field they admit 
of no objective application. 

General Observations on Transcendental 
^Esthetic 

The foregoing considerations now enable Kant to 
point out what he believes to be the nature of sensuous 
knowledge. 

All our intuition is nothing but the representation of 
phenomena. Things, as phenomena, can not exist by 
themselves, but only in relation to us. It remains com- 
pletely unknown to us what objects may be in them- 
selves apart from the receptivity of our senses. We know 
nothing but our manner of perceiving objects; this is 
what alone concerns us. Even if we could impart the 
highest degree of clearness to our intuition, we should 
not come one step nearer to the nature of objects in 
themselves. We should know our mode of intuition, 
that is, our sensibility, more completely, but always 
under the indefeasible conditions of space and time. 
What the objects are in themselves would never become 
known to us, even through the clearest knowledge of 
that which alone is given us, the phenomenon. If we 
drop our subjective condition, the object, as represented 
with its qualities bestowed on it by sensuous intuition, 



34 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

is nowhere to be found, and can not possibly be found, 
because its form, as phenomenal appearance, is deter- 
mined by those very subjective conditions. 

It has been customary in dealing with phenomena to 
distinguish between what is essential in them, and what 
is due to a particular position and organization of this 
or that sense. Such a procedure overlooks the trans- 
cendental distinction, for it implies the belief that we 
know things in themselves. An illustration may help 
to clarify this point. People might call the rainbow a 
mere phenomenal appearance, but the rain they would 
call the thing in itself. This would be quite right, phys- 
ically speaking, and taking rain as something which, in 
our ordinary experience and under all possible relations 
to our senses, can be determined thus and thus only in 
our intuition. But if we take the empirical in general, 
and ask, without caring whether it is the same with 
every particular observer, whether it represents a thing 
in itself (not the drops of rain, for these are already, as 
phenomena, empirical objects), then the question as to 
the relation between the representation and the object 
becomes transcendental, and not only the drops as mere 
phenomena, but even their round shape, nay even the 
space in which they fall, are nothing in themselves, but 
only modifications or fundamental dispositions of our 
sensuous intuition, the thing in itself remaining unknown 
to us. 

The next observation that Kant makes, is that the 
transcendental aesthetic furnishes not only a possible 
or probable, but a necessary hypothesis of the function 
of space and time as determining factors in the constitu- 



TRANSCENDENTAL ^ESTHETIC 35 

tion of phenomena. This is done by reiterating with 
emphasis some of the considerations in the metaphysical 
and transcendental expositions of space and time which 
had been brought forward to show not only the a priority 
and so the necessity, but also the synthetic character of 
the conclusions derived through space and time. 

The second edition contains a striking supplementary 
argument in confirmation of the theory of the phenom- 
enality of all objects of the senses. It is an argument 
based on the relational nature of all our knowledge which 
belongs to intuition. This knowledge which belongs to 
intuition contains nothing but mere relations, namely, 
of the places in an intuition (extension), change of places 
(motion), and laws, according to which that change is 
determined (moving forces). Nothing is told us thereby 
as to what is present in the place, or what, besides the 
change of place, is active in the things. A thing in itself, 
however, can not be known by mere relations, and we 
may, therefore, fairly conclude that, as the external 
sense gives us nothing but representations of relations, 
that sense can contain in its representation only the rela- 
tion of an object to the subject, and not what is inside the 
object in itself. The same applies to internal intuition. 
Not only do the representations of the external senses 
constitute its proper material with which we fill our mind, 
but time, in which these representations are placed, 
and which precedes even our consciousness of them in 
experience, nay, forms the formal condition of the manner 
in which we place them in the mind, contains itself rela- 
tions of succession, co-existence, and that which must 
be co-existent with succession, namely, the permanent. 



36 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

Now that which, as a representation, can precede every 
act of thinking something, is the intuition: and, if it 
contains nothing but relations, then the form of intuition. 
As this represents nothing except what is being placed 
in the mind, it can itself be the manner only in which 
the mind, through its own activity, that is, by this 
placing of its representation, is affected by itself, in 
other words, an internal sense with respect to its form. 
Whatever is represented by a sense is so far always 
phenomenal, and we should therefore have either to 
admit no internal sense at all, or the subject, which is its 
object, could be represented by it as phenomenal only. 
The consciousness of self is a simple representation of the 
ego. In man, this consciousness requires internal per- 
ception of the manifold, which is previously given in the 
subject, and the manner in which this is given in the 
mind must be called sensibility. If the faculty of self- 
consciousness is to seek for, that is, to apprehend what 
lies in the mind, it must affect the mind, and can thus 
only produce an intuition of itself. The form of this, 
which lay antecedently in the mind, determines the man- 
ner in which the manifold exists together in the mind, 
namely, in the representation of time. The intuition of 
self, therefore, is not, as if it could represent itself 
immediately and as spontaneously and independently 
active, but according to the manner in which it is inter- 
nally affected, consequently as it appears to itself, not 
as it is. 

If our consciousness of external objects and of the self 
is phenomenal, that does not in any way mean that it is 
illusory. 



TRANSCENDENTAL .ESTHETIC 37 



Conclusion of the Transcendental ^Esthetic 

We have now completely before us one part of the 
solution of the general problem of transcendental philos- 
ophy, namely, the question, How are synthetical propo- 
sitions a priori possible? That is to say, we have shown 
that we are in possession of pure a priori intuitions, 
namely, space and time, in which we find, when in a 
judgment a priori we pass out beyond the given concep- 
tion, something which is not discoverable in that concep- 
tion, but is certainly found a priori in the intuition which 
corresponds to the conception, and can be united syn- 
thetically with it. But the judgments which these pure 
intuitions enable us to make, never reach farther than to 
objects of the senses, and are valid only for objects of 
possible experience.* 

What is the general significance of the ^Esthetic? 
How is its doctrine to be understood? When Kant 
seems to say that mind receives, and in conformity to 
its own forms and capacities, orders the material which 
objects impress upon it, mind seems to be viewed as an 
independent and pre-existing entity which is in external 
relation to these objects. If this is Kant's meaning, 
then the question arises how the pre-existence and ex- 
ternal relation of mind and objects can be reconciled 
with the inseparability of consciousness and its object 
asserted later, and if there be such contradiction, why it 

* It may not be out of place here to suggest that results reached 
in the Analytic have a vital bearing on a complete statement of 
Kant's doctrine of space and time. 



38 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

was allowed to remain. Is there any way of understand- 
ing how such contradiction or apparent contradiction 
arose? Kant passed through various stages in his philo- 
sophical development, and it may be possible to view the 
Critique of Pure Reason as a synthesis of these stages 
in which the various parts have been brought over, but 
the external form of which has not been modified suffi- 
ciently to bring out explicitly the underlying principle 
through which the synthesis of these parts has been 
made. If this be considered in view of the fact that 
space and time manifest themselves through the medium 
of mind and require consciousness, and in view of the 
notion of mind then prevalent, we may find the reason 
for this difficulty. It was customary to look upon mind 
as a substance having thoughts, that is, as the underlying 
condition of conscious states. Mind, therefore, was not 
identical with conscious experiences, but was more funda- 
mental since it was their condition. But now since Kant 
saw that the given material of sense could not furnish 
space, time, and the other relations required by the 
existence of an experience such as ours, he might say 
that they could arise from the mind considered in the 
substantial sense, that is, that the mind precedes and 
renders experience possible. Had Kant identified mind 
and consciousness, we should have had this conclusion 
in direct contradiction with his well-established conclu- 
sion that consciousness and its object are correlative. 
But when mind is considered as the condition of con- 
sciousness, there is no contradiction and the argument 
of the ^Esthetic remains valid, even after he repudiates 
the substance view of mind, because all the time the 



TRANSCENDENTAL .ESTHETIC 39 

argument concerned the fundamental conditions under- 
lying consciousness.* 

It can not be denied that some aspects of Kant's doc- 
trine seem to point to solutions of the difficulty essen- 
tially different from the one which has been outlined 
above. Those who class Kant as a subjectivist are not 
without reasons for their view. They point to the fact 
that Kant seemed to believe in an external interaction 
between mind and real objects. Objects act upon the 
human organism, and when his organism is affected, the 
conscious subject refers the resulting sensations to ex- 
ternal objects as their producing causes. The general 
form and the universal laws of the phenomenal world 
resulting from such interpretation, are, from this point 
of view, supposed to depend upon the essential nature 
of an independent mind. If it were possible to reconcile 

* Kant held that human experience is from the first a space and 
time experience, that is, he held that space and time are presup- 
posed by such experience. But space and time can not be given 
by the atomic sense material, therefore they must be given by 
conditions basic to consciousness. At first, if he held a substance 
view of mind, Kant could identify these basic conditions with 
mind; but later he doubts whether their identification can be 
theoretically justified. It should be noted, however, that such a 
change of view concerning mind would in no wise affect the validity 
of his argument. In the Esthetic as in all parts of the Critique 
Kant held that space and time must come from unconscious con- 
ditions which result in conscious experience. Whether these con- 
ditions be identified with the mind considered as a substantial 
entity, or whether they be considered as conditions basic to the 
mind, though not included in it, makes not the slightest difference 
to this argument; though it may have important consequences 
in other connections. Cf. note, p. 30. 



40 INTRODUCTION TO KANT 7 S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

this view with other portions of Kant's doctrine, the 
significance of mind in the ^Esthetic would be clear; 
but the great bulk of evidence is against this position. 
It is true that Kant seems to hold that the phenomenal 
object and the human organism act upon each other, and 
it is also true that his general form of statement is in- 
fluenced by this view. But much of the Critique indi- 
cates that Kant looked upon this interaction as falling 
within a wider sphere conditioned on both sides by a 
reality more ultimate than either human subject or 
phenomenal object. This leads us to consider another 
interpretation which says that Kant started from a 
dualism, out of which he is forced by the logic of his own 
thought. At this point he looks upon all reality as exist- 
ing in the subject-object form, consequently, things in 
themselves and selves in themselves are seen to be fic- 
tions. Consciousness by its very nature goes beyond it- 
self to include objects. Consciousness can not manifest 
itself except in the subject-object form. All essential 
separation between consciousness and reality vanishes. 
Reality is the manifestation or objectivity of reason. 
In so far as human knowledge is not adequate to account 
for this result, it is supposed to be due to an absolute 
consciousness functioning in the finite subject and its 
correlative, the world. It must be admitted that this 
interpretation of Kant is based on a very important 
and carefully elaborated part of his work. It may 
even be that this is the logical outcome of Kant's 
position. But it does not seem to be the position which 
he holds.* 

* Cf. pp. 175, 176. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ^ESTHETIC 4 1 

We may now point out briefly some implications of 
the position which Kant takes in the ^Esthetic. 

The extreme empirical position has been refuted. 
Human beings do not first have mere isolated sense im- 
pressions which somehow group themselves and produce 
the appearance of an external world related to a self. 
From such atomic elements alone no perceived world 
and no knowledge would arise. It is necessary to assume 
the principles of connection as being present in experi- 
ence from the beginning. 

As the space and time aspect of experience is in some 
way dependent upon the basic conditions of conscious- 
ness, the universality and necessity of mathematics can 
be explained. Being conditioned as we are, all our ob- 
jects must be in space and all our internal experiences 
in time. Space and time are constant factors which 
furnish the foundation for a priori knowledge. But 
Kant thinks that this argument makes it necessary to 
deny that things in themselves exist in space and time. 
Though space and time are the forms of all our percep- 
tions, they themselves depend upon more ultimate condi- 
tions, and of course, they can not condition the conditions 
out of which they arise. 

• If Kant held that the perceived world depends upon 
something more ultimate than individual forms and 
activities, many of the objections to his system lose their 
point. The perceived world, though implying conscious- 
ness, would then have a relatively independent existence 
of its own. In this world natural man could arise and 
pass away. And although the whole phenomenal world 
is a correlative of consciousness, the natural organism 



42 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

which arises in time might be an indispensable condition 
connected with consciousness. In this world, knowledge, 
culture and civilization might arise and pass away. In 
other words, this point of view would give to objective 
existence all the reality that could possibly be desired. 
It is not necessarily inconsistent with this general point 
of view to hold that although human beings arise in 
connection with the space and time order of things, 
they, as conscious and moral beings, manifest a capacity 
and a worth which transcend the natural order of things. 
The conscious and moral self is a unique factor in ex- 
perience. True, the human self springs out of conditions 
of which he is not directly conscious, and passes at the 
end of natural life into conditions which his keenest 
insight can not fathom. But in the phenomenal world 
his consciousness is the correlative of objects in general. 
As a moral agent he feels impelled and able to introduce 
a new order, to change and shape the course of events. 
For him the phenomenal world though relatively real 
is not the last word. 



TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC 

Our knowledge arises from two fundamental sources 
of the mind, the first of which is the reception of repre- 
sentations (the receptivity of impressions), the second 
the power of knowing an object through these representa- 
tions (spontaneity of concepts); through the first an 
object is given to us, through the second, this object is 
thought in relation to that representation (as mere deter- 
mination of mind). Intuition and concepts, therefore, 
constitute the elements of all our knowledge, so that 
neither concepts which are without any corresponding 
intuition, nor intuition without concepts can result in 
knowledge. Both are either pure or empirical. They 
are empirical when they contain sensation (which pre- 
supposes the actual presence of the object); pure when 
no sensation is mixed with the representation. One 
may call the latter the material of sensuous knowledge. 
Consequently pure intuition contains the form alone 
under which something is intuited, and pure conception 
contains only the form of thinking an object in general. 
Only pure intuitions and pure conceptions are possible 
a priori; the empirical only a posteriori. 

We would call the receptivity of our mind, that is, its 
power of receiving representations, whenever it is in 
in any wise affected, sensibility, while the understanding, 
on the contrary, is the power of producing representa- 
tions, or the spontaneity of knowledge. Our nature is so 

43 



44 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

constituted, that intuition can never be other than sen- 
suous, that is, it contains only the way in which we are 
affected by objects. On the contrary, the understanding 
is the power of thinking the object of sensuous intuition. 
Neither of these powers is to be preferred over the other. 
Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and 
without understanding no object could be thought by us. 
Thoughts without content are empty, and intuitions without 
concepts are blind. Consequently it is just as necessary 
to make one's concepts sensuous (that is, to add to them 
the object in intuition) as to make one's intuitions in- 
telligible (that is, to bring them under concepts) . Neither 
of these powers or capacities can exchange its proper 
function. The understanding can not intuit anything, 
and the senses can not think anything. Only through 
their union can knowledge arise. Consequently one must 
not confuse the part which each plays, but must carefully 
separate and distinguish each from the other. Conse- 
quently we distinguish the science of the rules of the sen- 
sibility in general, that is, the ^Esthetic, from the science 
of the rules of the understanding in general, that is, 
Logic. The discipline which expounds the forms of 
thought is called logic. Kant distinguishes between 
universal logic and particular logic. The former deals 
strictly with the forms of thought, the latter with the 
application of those forms to particular instances. But 
universal logic does not cover the problem as it presents 
itself to Kant, for, since thought without intuitions is 
empty, we must seek forms of thought which are pure 
and at the same time are objective in their application. 
This is the mission of transcendental logic. Not every 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 45 

kind of knowledge a priori can be called transcendental, 
but only that by which we know that and how certain 
representations (intuitional or conceptual) can be used 
or are possible a priori only. Transcendental logic, then, 
seeks those forms of thinking, which are not merely a 
priori forms, but at the same time refer a priori to objects 
of experience. In other words, transcendental logic must 
determine the origin, the extent and objective validity 
of those kinds of knowledge which deal with the laws of 
understanding and reason. 

Transcendental logic, like general logic, has two di- 
visions: analytic and dialectic. That part of tran- 
scendental logic which teaches the elements of the pure 
knowledge of the understanding, and the principles 
without which no object can be thought, is transcen- 
dental analytic, and at the same time a logic of truth. 
No knowledge can contradict it without losing at the 
same time all content, that is, all relation to any object, 
and therefore all truth. 

In general logic, in the dialectic, the understanding 
runs the risk of making, through mere sophisms, a mate- 
rial use of the purely formal principles of the pure under- 
standing, and thus of judging indiscriminately of objects 
which are not given to us, nay, perhaps can never 
be given. In transcendental logic, the transcendental 
dialectic must therefore form a critique of that dialectical 
semblance. 



TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC 

Part I 

TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 

Transcendental analytic consists in the dissection of all 
our knowledge a priori into the elements which consti- 
tute the knowledge of the pure understanding. Four 
points are here essential: first, that the concepts should 
be pure and not empirical; secondly, that they should 
not belong to intuition and sensibility, but to thought 
and understanding; thirdly, that the concepts should 
be basic and carefully distinguished from derivative or 
composite concepts; fourthly, that our tables should 
cover the whole field of the pure understanding. This 
completeness of a science can not be confidently accepted 
on the strength of a mere estimate, or by means of re- 
peated experiments only; what is required for it is an 
idea of the totality of the a priori knowledge of the 
understanding, and a classification of the concepts based 
upon it; in fact, a systematic treatment. This involves 
two parts: the analytic of the concepts of the pure under- 
standing and the analytic of the principles of the pure 
understanding. 



46 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 
BOOK I. ANALYTIC OF CONCEPTS 

By analytic of concepts Kant means the dissection of 
the faculty of the understanding itself, with the sole ob- 
ject of discovering the possibility of the concepts a 
priori, by looking for them nowhere but in the under- 
standing itself as their birthplace, and analyzing the 
pure use of the understanding, freed from all inherent 
empirical conditions. 

As in the aesthetic, all intuitions, being sensuous, 
depend on affections, so in the analytic, the under- 
standing in using concepts depends on functions. By 
function, Kant here means the unity of the act of ar- 
ranging different representations under one common 
representation. The only use which the understanding 
can make of these concepts is to form judgments by them. 
All judgments are functions of unity among our rep- 
resentations, the knowledge of an object being brought 
about, not by an immediate representation, but by a 
higher one, comprehending this and several others, so 
that many possible cognitions are collected into one. 
As all acts of the understanding can be reduced to judg- 
ments, the understanding may be defined as the faculty 
of judging. Thus the functions of the understanding can 
be discovered in their completeness, if it is possible to 
represent the functions of unity in judgments. 

47 



48 introduction to kant's critical philosophy 

Discovery of the Categories 

If we leave out of consideration the contents of any 
judgment, and fix our attention on the mere form of the 
understanding, we find that the function of thought in a 
judgment can be brought under four heads, each of them 
having three sub-divisions. These may be stated as 
follows: 





Quantity of judgments 






Universal. 






Particular. 






Singular. 




II. 




III. 


Quality 




Relation 


Affirmative. 




Categorical. 


Negative. 




Hypothetical 


Infinite. 


IV. 

Modality 
Problematical. 
Assertory. 
Apodictic. 


Disjunctive. 



We find that Kant has gone somewhat beyond the 
conventional classification in so far that he has added the 
singular judgment under the head of quantity, and the 
infinite judgment under the head of quality. Formal 
logic has treated the singular like the universal judgment. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 49 

Since these singular judgments have no extent at all, the 
predicate can not refer to part only of that which is con- 
tained in the concept of the subject, and be excluded 
from the rest. But if we compare the singular and univer- 
sal judgments, looking only at the quantity of knowledge 
conveyed by each, it will be seen that the singular judg- 
ment stands to the universal judgment as unity to in- 
finity, and is therefore essentially different from it. Like- 
wise with the addition of the infinite judgment to the 
affirmative and the negative judgments under the head 
of quality. General logic asks only whether the predi- 
cate is affirmed or denied. Transcendental logic, on the 
contrary, considers a judgment according to the value 
also or the contents of a logical affirmation by means of 
a purely negative predicate, and asks how much is gained 
by that affirmation, with reference to the sum total of 
knowledge. For example: when we say, the soul is not 
mortal, we have really affirmed that the soul is non- 
mortal. This means that we have placed the soul in 
the unlimited sphere of non-mortal beings. The whole 
sphere of possible beings can be designated as the mortal 
and the non-mortal, and so in this judgment the infinite 
sphere of all that is possible becomes limited only in so 
far that all that is mortal is excluded from it, and that 
afterwards the soul is placed in the remaining part of its 
original extent. But this part, even after its limita- 
tion, still remains infinite. These judgments, therefore, 
though infinite with respect to their logical extent, are, 
with respect to their contents, limitative only, and so 
can not be passed over in a transcendental table of all 
varieties of thought in judgments. 



5° 

The examples just given help to illustrate another 
point which is of prime importance in the present state- 
ment of Kant's metaphysical deduction of the categories 
of the understanding. They are concrete instances 
which show that these forms of judgment given in the 
table are still from Kant's point of view merely analytic. 
General logic, he believes, in so far that it is concerned 
with formal processes of thought, proceeds analytically. 
But in order to have analysis, there must first have been 
synthesis. Our thought requires that what is manifold 
in pure intuition should first be examined, received, and 
connected, in order to transform it into knowledge. 
This is what Kant calls synthesis. Knowledge is first 
produced by the synthesis of what is manifold. That 
knowledge may at first be crude and confused and in 
need of analysis, but it is synthesis which really collects 
the elements of knowledge, and unites them to a certain 
extent. It is therefore the first thing which we have to 
consider if we want to form an opinion concerning the 
first origin of our knowledge. 

Synthesis in general is the mere result of what Kant 
calls a blind but indispensable function of the soul, 
without which we should have no knowledge whatever, 
and of which we are seldom even conscious. But to 
reduce this synthesis to concepts is a function that be- 
longs to the understanding, and by which the under- 
standing supplies us for the first time with knowledge 
properly so called. 

Pure synthesis in its most general meaning gives us 
the pure concept of the understanding. By this pure 
synthesis Kant means that which rests on the foundation 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 5 1 

of what he calls synthetical unity a priori. Thus our 
counting (as we best perceive when dealing with higher 
numbers) is a synthesis according to concepts, because 
resting on a common ground of unity, as for instance, 
the decade. The unity of the synthesis of the manifold 
becomes necessary under this concept. 

By means of analysis different representations are 
brought under one concept, a task treated of in general 
logic as exemplified in the foregoing table of judgments. 
But how to bring, not the representations, but the pure 
synthesis of representations, under concepts, that is 
what transcendental logic means to teach. The first 
that must be given us a priori for the sake of knowledge 
of all objects, is the manifold in pure intuition. The 
second is the synthesis of the manifold by means of 
imagination. But this does not yet produce true knowl- 
edge. The concepts which impart unity to this pure 
synthesis and consist entirely in the representation of 
this necessary synthetical unity, add the third contri- 
bution towards the knowledge of an object, and rest on 
the understanding. 

The same function which imparts unity to various 
representations in one judgment imparts unity likewise 
to the mere synthesis of various representations in one 
intuition, which in a general way may be called the pure 
concept of the understanding. The same understanding, 
and by the same operations by which in concepts it 
achieves through analytical unity the logical form of a 
judgment, introduces also, through the synthetical unity 
of the manifold in intuition, a transcendental element 
into its representations. They are therefore called pure 



52 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

concepts of the understanding, and they refer a priori 
to objects, which would be quite impossible in general 
logic. 

In this manner, there arise exactly so many pure con- 
cepts of the understanding which refer a priori to objects 
of intuition in general, as there were in our table logical 
functions in all possible judgments, because those func- 
tions completely exhaust the understanding, and com- 
prehend every one of its faculties. Borrowing a term of 
Aristotle, Kant calls these concepts categories, his inten- 
tion being originally the same as that of Aristotle, though 
widely diverging from it in its practical application. 





Table of Categories 

T 




J.. 

Of Quantity 




Unity. 




Plurality. 




Totality. 


II. 


III. 


Of Quality 


Of Relation 


Reality. 


Of Inherence and Subsistence 


Negation. 


(substantia et accidens). 


Limitation. 


Of Causality and Dependence 




(cause and effect). 




Of Community 




(reciprocity between the 




active and passive). 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 53 

IV. 

Of Modality 

Possibility. Impossibility. 
Existence. Non-existence. 
Necessity. Contingency. 

This then is the list of all original pure concepts of 
synthesis, which the understanding includes in itself, 
and on account of which only it is a pure understanding. 

The importance of the preceding obscure argument 
renders some explanation necessary. What is sometimes 
called the metaphysical deduction seems to be based on 
the assumption that the different processes involved in 
the experiences of a self are necessarily connected, and 
hence that they may be expected to throw light upon one 
another. This seems to be Kant's position despite his 
belief that reason's demands for unity can not be gratified 
and in general that theoretical thought is unable to know 
ultimate reality. Granting then that conscious experi- 
ence must be a more or less unified experience in all its 
parts, it appears obvious that the instruments by means 
of which formal thought attains unity, may be looked 
upon as furnishing a clue for the discovery of the prin- 
ciples of unity operating in the sphere of objective reality. 
This expectation seems reasonable for two reasons: (i) 
formal thought and concrete experience belong to the 
same consciousness; (2) formal thought presupposes and 
depends upon concrete knowledge for its material. It 
is now possible to take a further step in the argument. 



54 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

In formal thought judgment is the principle of unity, 
and formal logic if completed gives, according to Kant, 
a complete list of the analytic judgments; and as analysis 
presupposes a synthesis, the analytic judgments of 
formal logic are supposed to imply just so many synthetic 
processes. When we attempt to reduce these processes 
to conceptions, we arrive at Kant's famous table of 
categories. The categories represent the basic principles 
presupposed by all our thought concerning reality. They 
are implicitly present in the thought and experience of 
all men and determine the ways in which that experience 
can be organized. We are led to employ these general 
conceptions as if by instinct. It is as if the noumenal 
conditions of our being predetermined certain grooves 
in the general form of our conscious experience along 
which our thought is constrained to move. We have 
found the categories, but their justification can not be 
established without a transcendental deduction; that is 
Kant's next task. 

Transcendental Deduction of the Categories 

Jurists, when speaking of rights and claims, distin- 
guish in every law suit the question of right from the 
question of fad, and in demanding proof of both, they 
call the former, which is to show the right, the deduction. 
Some concepts which have been used are legitimate and 
some are illegitimate. Hume holds that the criterion of 
the legitimacy of the use of such concepts is their 
being found in experience. The principles of causality 
and substance, for example, he believes to be the re- 
sults of an instinctive activity aroused by experience, 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 55 

but on account of this very instinctiveness and not 
direct experiential presence, he calls them illegitimate 
concepts. Kant also makes these principles the results 
of an instinctive activity, but unlike Hume, holds them 
to be legitimate, because these principles are justified 
by the fact that they are involved in the very possibility 
of all experience. The elaboration and grounding of 
this proposition, then, is the problem which he considers 
in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. 

By transcendental deduction Kant means the explanation 
of the way in which the pure concepts of synthesis can a 
priori refer to objects. This is very different from an 
empirical deduction which simply shows how a concept 
may be gained either by experience or by reflection upon 
experience. It is obvious therefore that the empirical 
deduction, since it is empirical, in no wise proves the 
legitimacy of the concepts, but only accounts for their 
empirical origin. There are two possible ways in which 
synthetical representations and their objects can refer 
to each other with necessity. Either the object alone 
makes the representation possible, or the representation 
alone makes the object possible. The former alternative 
can give only an empirical relation, and so the representa- 
tion is never possible a priori. In the latter case, though 
representation by itself (for we do not speak here of its 
causality by means of the will) can not produce its 
object so far as its existence is concerned, nevertheless 
the representation determines the object a priori, if 
through it alone it is possible to know anything as an 
object. 

The question now is whether there are not antecedent 



56 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

concepts a priori, forming conditions under which some- 
thing can be thought as an object in general; for in that 
case all empirical knowledge of objects would necessarily 
conform to such concepts, it being impossible that any- 
thing should become an object of experience without 
them. Such concepts of objects in general therefore 
must form conditions a priori of all knowledge produced 
by experience, and the objective validity of the categories 
as being such concepts a priori, rests on this very fact 
that by them alone, so far as the form of thought is 
concerned, experience becomes possible. If by them only 
it is possible to think any object of experience, it follows 
that they refer by necessity and a priori to all objects 
of experience. 

SUBJECTIVE DEDUCTION 

The concepts which comprehend the pure thinking 
a priori involved in every experience are discovered in the 
categories, and it is a sufficient deduction of them and a 
justification of their objective validity, if we can succeed 
in proving that by them alone an object can be thought. 
But as in such a process of thinking more is at work than 
the faculty of thinking only, namely, the understanding; 
and as the understanding, as a faculty of knowledge 
which is meant to refer to objects, requires quite as much 
an explanation as to the possibility of such a reference, 
it is necessary for us to consider the subjective sources 
which form the foundation a priori for the possibility 
of experience, not according to their empirical, but 
according to their transcendental character. 

If every single representation stood by itself, as if 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 57 

isolated and separated from the others, nothing like what 
we call knowledge could ever arise, because knowledge 
forms a whole of representations connected and compared 
with each other. Kant maintains, therefore, if one as- 
cribes to the senses a synopsis, because in their intuition 
they contain something manifold, there corresponds to 
it always a synthesis, and receptivity can make knowl- 
edge possible only when joined with spontaneity. This 
spontaneity appears as a three-fold synthesis which 
must take place in every kind of knowledge, namely, 
first, that of the apprehension of representations as modi- 
fications of the soul in intuition, secondly, of the repro- 
duction of them in the imagination, and, thirdly, that of 
their recognition in concepts. This leads us to three sub- 
jective sources of knowledge which render possible the 
understanding, and through it, all experience as an 
empirical product of the understanding. 

I. Of the Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition 

Whatever the origin of our representations may be, 
whether they be due to the influence of external things 
or to internal causes, whether they have arisen a priori 
or empirically as phenomena, as modifications of the 
mind they must always belong to the internal sense, 
and all our knowledge must therefore finally be subject 
to the formal condition of that internal sense, namely, 
time, in which they are all arranged, joined, and brought 
into certain relations to each other. 

Every representation contains something manifold, 
which could not be represented as such, unless the mind 



58 

distinguished the time in the succession of one impression 
after another; for as contained in one moment, each 
representation can never be anything but absolute unity. 
In order to change this manifold into a unity of intuition 
(as, for instance, in the representation of space), it is 
necessary first to run through the manifold and then to 
hold it together. It is this act which Kant calls the 
synthesis of apprehension, because it refers directly 
to intuition which no doubt offers something manifold, 
but which, without a synthesis, can never make it such, 
as is contained in one representation. 

This synthesis of apprehension must be carried out 
a priori also, that is, with reference to representations 
which are not empirical. For without it we should never 
be able to have the representations either of space or of 
time a priori, because these can not be produced except 
by synthesis of the manifold which the senses offer in 
their original receptivity. It follows therefore that we 
have a pure synthesis of apprehension. 

II. Of the Synthesis of Reproduction in Imagination 

It is no doubt nothing but an empirical law according 
to which representations which have often followed or 
accompanied one another, become associated so closely 
that, even without the presence of the object, one of 
these representations will, according to an invariable 
law, produce a transition of the mind to the other. This 
law of reproduction, however, presupposes that there is 
in the variety of these representations a sequence and 
concomitancy subject to certain rules; for without this 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 59 

the faculty of empirical imagination would never find 
anything to do, that it is able to do, and would remain, 
therefore, buried within our mind as a dead faculty, un- 
known to ourselves. 

There must therefore be something to make this 
reproduction of phenomena possible by being itself the 
foundation a priori of a necessary synthetical unity of 
them. This becomes clear if we only remember that all 
phenomena are not things in themselves but only the 
play of our representations, all of which are in the end 
determinations only of the internal sense. If therefore 
we could prove that even our purest intuitions a priori 
give us no knowledge, unless they contain such a com- 
bination of the manifold as to render a constant synthesis 
of reproduction possible, it would follow that this syn- 
thesis of the imagination is, before all experience, founded 
on principles a priori, and that we must admit a pure 
transcendental synthesis of the imagination which forms 
even the foundation of the possibility of all experience, 
such experience being impossible without the reproduc- 
tibility of phenomena. Now when I draw a line in 
thought, or if I think the time from one noon to another, 
or if I only represent to myself a certain number, it is 
clear that I must first necessarily apprehend one of these 
manifold representations after another. If I were to 
lose from my thoughts what precedes, whether the first 
parts of a line or the antecedent portions of time, or the 
numerical unities representing one after the other, and 
if, while I proceed to what follows, I were unable to re- 
produce what came before, there would never be a com- 
plete representation, and none of the before-mentioned 



60 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

thoughts, not even the first and purest representations 
of space and time, could ever arise within me. 

The synthesis of apprehension is therefore inseparably 
connected with the synthesis of reproduction, and as the 
former constitutes the transcendental ground of the 
possibility of all knowledge in general, it follows that a 
reproductive synthesis of imagination belongs to the 
transcendental acts of the soul. We may therefore call 
this faculty the transcendental faculty of imagination. 

III. Of the Synthesis of Recognition in Concepts 

Without recognition that what we are thinking now 
is the same as what we thought a moment before, all 
reproduction in the series of representations would be 
vain. Each representation would, in its present state, 
be a new one, and in no wise belonging to the act by which 
it was to be produced by degrees, and the manifold in it 
would never form a whole, because deprived of that unity 
which consciousness alone can impart to it. 

Since we can deal only with the manifold in our 
representations, and since the object corresponding to 
them — for it is to be something different from all our 
representations, — is really nothing to us, it is clear that 
the unity necessitated by the object, can not be anything 
but the formal unity of our consciousness in the syn- 
thesis of the manifold in our representations. Then and 
then only do we say that we know an object, if we have 
produced synthetical unity in the manifold of intuition. 
Such unity would be impossible, if the intuition could not 
be produced, according to a rule, by such a function of 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 6 1 

synthesis as would make the reproduction of the mani- 
fold a priori necessary, and would make possible a con- 
cept in which that manifold is united. For example, we 
conceive a triangle as an object, if we are conscious of 
the combination of three straight lines, according to a 
rule (a principle of synthesis) which renders such an 
intuition possible at all times. This unity of rule deter- 
mines the manifold and limits it to conditions which 
render the unity of apperception possible, and the con- 
cept of that unity is really the representation of an 
object =x, which I think, by means of the predicates of 
a triangle. 

No knowledge is possible without a concept, however 
obscure or imperfect it may be, and a concept is always, 
with regard to its form, something that can serve as a 
rule. The concept body, for example, is a rule, and as 
such, a principle of synthetical unity in our consciousness 
of the manifold, that is, the concept body, whenever we 
perceive something outside us, necessitates the repre- 
sentation of extension, and with it, those of imper- 
meability, etc. 

Necessity is always founded on transcendental condi- 
tions. There must be therefore a transcendental ground 
of the unity of our consciousness in the synthesis of the 
manifold of all our intuitions, and therefore also a trans- 
cendental ground of all concepts of objects in general, 
and therefore again of all objects of experience, without 
which it would be impossible to add to our intuitions 
the thought of an object, for the object is no more than 
that something of which the concept predicates such a 
necessity of synthesis. 



62 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

Before continuing the statement of the deduction it 
becomes necessary to point out, and in what follows to 
keep in mind, two ways in which Kant may be inter- 
preted, since Kant here seems to be fluctuating between 
two positions.* One of the positions is that the ground 
of this synthesis is the synthetical unity of apperception, 
and that objectivity is given as a direct result of this 
unity of self-consciousness, that is, making the synthetic 
process the direct contribution or indeed synonymous 
with the synthetical unity of apperception. The diffi- 
culty involved in this interpretation is that it would 
involve an assertion that we have a knowledge of the 
noumenal conditions of the self, which seems to be in- 
consistent with the main body of his teaching, for ex- 
ample, the statements concerning the nature of self- 
consciousness in the Paralogisms, and inconsistent with 
his doctrine that the thing in itself is unknown, and un- 
knowable theoretically, and with his general conclusions 
concerning the limits of knowledge. 

The other alternative interpretation is much less evi- 
dent, but at the same time very definitely stated by him 
when he says from time to time that these synthetical 
processes are expressed through the blind function of 
imagination, and only thereafter become represented 
in clear consciousness. That is, that these synthetical 
processes are absolutely basal to human consciousness 
and apprehension, and are processes which must take 

* Cf. Andrew Seth, Scottish Philosophy, pp. 131-49. Norman 
Kemp Smith, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific 
Methods, Vol. ix, pp. 113-28. T. H. Green, Works, Vol. ii, 
pp. 8-10 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 63 

place before we can have objects, and even either con- 
sciousness or self -consciousness. This means that Kant 
is holding that these synthetical processes are dependent 
upon noumenal conditions and are unknown, but, when 
he tries to represent these synthetical processes, he is 
compelled to describe them by means of analogies drawn 
from the phenomena of self-consciousness. Even though 
these underlying synthetical processes are conditions of 
objects, it must not be forgotten that in order to have a 
known world scientifically organized these processes must 
be represented by concepts in consciousness, and so 
in terms of consciousness. These synthetical processes 
always carry with them the potentiality of consciousness, 
and only in so far as they do result in consciousness, 
do they lead to a phenomenal world which is the only 
world that we know. Thus Kant shows that in order to 
have such a world of experience as we actually do have, 
it is necessary to presuppose these synthetical processes 
as a foundation, and furthermore, in order to reach 
validity in objective relations it is necessary for con- 
sciousness to operate by means of certain definite prin- 
ciples or categories. This carries us over into the ob- 
jective deduction. 

Objective Deduction 

The manifold of representations may be given in an 
intuition which is purely sensuous, that is, nothing but 
receptivity, and the form of that intuition may lie a priori 
in our faculty of representation, without being anything 
but the manner in which a subject is affected. But the 



64 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

connection of anything manifold can never enter into 
us through the senses, and can not be contained, there- 
fore, already in the pure form of sensuous intuition, for 
it is a spontaneous act of the power of representation; 
and as, in order to distinguish this from sensibility, we 
must call it understanding, we see that all connecting, 
whether we are conscious of it or not, and whether we 
connect the manifold of intuition of several concepts 
together, and again, whether that intuition be sensuous 
or not sensuous, is an act of the understanding. This 
act we shall call by the general name of synthesis, in 
order to show that we can not represent to ourselves any- 
thing as connected in the object, without having pre- 
viously connected it ourselves, and that of all represen- 
tations connection is the only one which dan not be given 
through the objects, but must be carried out by the sub- 
ject itself, because it is an act of its spontaneity. It can 
be easily perceived that this act must be originally one 
and the same for every kind of connection, and that its 
dissolution, that is, the analysis, which seems to be its 
opposite, always presupposes it. For where the under- 
standing has not previously connected, there is nothing 
for it to disconnect, because, as connected, it could 
only be given by the understanding to the faculty of 
representation. 

But the concept of connection includes, besides the 
concept of the manifold and the synthesis of it, the 
concept of the unity of the manifold also. Connection 
is representation of the synthetical unity of the manifold. 

The representation of that unity can not therefore be 
the result of the connection; on the contrary, the concept 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 65 

of the connection becomes first possible by the represen- 
tation of unity being added to the representation of 
the manifold. And this unity, which precedes a priori 
all concepts of connection, must not be mistaken for 
the category of unity; for all categories depend on logical 
functions in judgments, and in these we have already 
connection, and therefore unity of given concepts. The 
category, therefore, presupposes connection, and we 
must consequently look still higher for this unity as 
qualitative, in that, namely, which itself contains the 
ground for the unity of different concepts in judgments, 
that is, the ground for the very possibility of the under- 
standing, even in its logical employment. 

It must be possible that the / think should accompany 
all my representations: for otherwise something would 
be represented within me that could not be thought, in 
other words, the representation would either be impos- 
sible or nothing, at least so far as I am concerned. That 
representation which can be given before all thought, 
is called intuition, and all the manifold of intuition has 
therefore a necessary relation to the / think in the same 
subject in which that manifold of intuition is found. 
That representation, however, is an act of spontaneity, 
that is, can not be considered as belonging to sensibility. 
Kant calls it pure apperception, in order to distinguish 
it from empirical apperception, because it is that self- 
consciousness which by producing the representation, 
I think (which must accompany all others, and is one 
and the same in every act of consciousness), can not 
itself be accompanied by any other. He also calls the 
unity of it the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, 



66 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

in order to indicate that it contains the possibility of 
knowledge a priori. 

For the manifold representations given in any intui- 
tion would not be my representations, if they did not 
all belong to one self -consciousness. What he means is 
that, as my representations (even though I am not 
conscious of them as such), they must be in accordance 
with that condition, under which alone they can stand 
together in one common self -consciousness, because 
otherwise they would not all belong to me. From this 
original connection the following important conclusions 
can be deduced. 

The unbroken identity of apperception of the manifold 
that is given in intuition contains a synthesis of represen- 
tations, and is possible only through the consciousness 
of that synthesis. The empirical consciousness, which 
accompanies various representations, is itself various 
and disunited, and without reference to the identity of 
the subject. Such a relation takes place, not by my 
simply accompanying every relation with consciousness, 
but by my adding one to the other and being conscious 
of that act of adding, that is, of that synthesis. Only 
because I am able to connect the manifold of given repre- 
sentations in one consciousness, is it possible for me to 
represent to myself the identity of the consciousness in 
these representations, that is, only under the supposition 
of some synthetical unity of apperception does the 
analytical unity of apperception become possible. 

This analytical unity of consciousness belongs to all 
general concepts, as such. If, for instance, I think red 
in general, I represent to myself a property, which (as a 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 67 

characteristic mark) may be found in something, or 
can be connected with other representations; that is to 
say, only under a presupposed possible synthetical unity 
can I represent to myself the analytical. The synthetical 
unity of apperception is, therefore, the highest point 
with which all employment of the understanding, and 
even the whole of logic, and afterwards the whole of 
transcendental philosophy, must be connected; ay, that 
faculty is the understanding itself. 

The thought that the representations given in intui- 
tion belong all of them to me, is therefore the same as 
that I connect them in one self-consciousness, or am able 
at least to do so; and though this is not yet the conscious- 
ness of the synthesis of representations, it nevertheless 
presupposes the possibility of this synthesis. In other 
words, it is only because I am able to comprehend the 
manifold of representations in one consciousness, that 
I call them altogether my representations, for otherwise, 
I should have as manifold and various a self as I have 
representations of which I am conscious. The syn- 
thetical unity of the manifold of intuitions as given a 
priori is therefore the ground also of the identity of that 
apperception itself which precedes a priori all definite 
thought. 

The understanding in its most general sense is the 
faculty of cognitions. These consist in a definite relation 
of given representations to an object; and an object is 
that in the concept of which the manifold of a given 
intuition is connected. All such connection of representa- 
tions requires of course the unity of the consciousness 
in their synthesis: consequently, the unity of conscious- 



68 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

ness is that which alone constitutes the relation of repre- 
sentations to an object, that is, their objective validity, 
and consequently their becoming cognitions, so that 
the very possibility of the understanding depends on it. 

The first pure cognition of the understanding, there- 
fore, on which all the rest of its employment is founded, 
and which at the same time is entirely independent of 
all conditions of sensuous intuition, is this very principle 
of the original synthetical unity of apperception. Space, 
the mere form of external sensuous intuition, is not yet 
cognition: it only supplies the manifold of intuition a 
priori for a possible cognition. In order to know any- 
thing in space, for instance, a line, I must draw it, and 
produce synthetically a certain connection of the mani- 
fold that is given, so that the unity of that act is at the 
same time the unity of the consciousness (in the concept 
of a line), and (so that) an object (a determinate space) 
is then only known for the first time. The synthetical 
unity of consciousness is, therefore, an objective condi- 
tion of all knowledge; a condition, not necessary for 
myself only, in order to know an object, but one to which 
each intuition must be subject, in order to become an 
object for me, because the manifold could not become 
connected in one consciousness in any other way, and 
without such a synthesis. 

And yet this need not be a principle for every possible 
understanding, but only for that which gives nothing 
manifold through its pure apperception in the represen- 
tation, / am. An understanding which through its self- 
consciousness could give the manifold of intuition, and 
by whose representation the objects of that representa- 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 69 

tion should at the same time exist, would not require a 
special act of the synthesis of the manifold for the unity 
of its consciousness, while the human understanding, 
which possesses the power of thought only, but not of 
intuition, requires such an act. To the human under- 
standing that first principle is so indispensable that it 
really can not form the least concept of any other possible 
understanding, whether it be intuitive by itself, or pos- 
sessed of a sensuous intuition, different from that in 
space and time. 

The transcendental unity of apperception connects 
all the manifold given in an intuition into a concept of 
an object. It is therefore called objective, and must be 
distinguished from the subjective unity of consciousness, 
which is a form of the internal sense, by which the mani- 
fold of intuition is empirically given, to be thus con- 
nected. Whether I can become empirically conscious of 
the manifold, as either simultaneous or successive, de- 
pends on circumstances, or empirical conditions. The 
empirical unity of consciousness, therefore, through the 
association of representations, is itself phenomenal and 
wholly contingent, while the pure form of intuition in 
time, merely as general intuition containing the manifold 
that is given, is subject to the original unity of the con- 
sciousness, through the necessary relation only of the 
manifold of intuition to the one, J think, — that is, through 
the pure synthesis of the understanding, which forms the 
a priori ground of the empirical synthesis. That unity 
alone is, therefore, valid objectively; the empirical unity 
of apperception, which we do not consider here, and which 
is only derived from the former, under given conditions 



70 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

in concrete, has subjective validity only. One man con- 
nects the representation of a word with one thing, an- 
other with another, and the unity of consciousness, with 
regard to what is empirical, is not necessary nor univer- 
sally valid with reference to that which is given. 

Kant proceeds: If I examine the relation of given 
cognitions in every judgment, and distinguish it, as 
belonging to the understanding, from the relation ac- 
cording to the rules of reproductive imagination (which 
has subjective validity only), I find that a judgment is 
nothing but the mode of bringing given cognitions into 
the objective unity of apperception. This is what is in- 
tended by the copula is, which is meant to distinguish 
the objective unity of given representations from the 
subjective. It (the copula is) indicates their relation 
to the original apperception, and their necessary unity, 
even though the judgment itself be empirical, and there- 
fore contingent; as, for instance, bodies are heavy. By 
this I do not mean to say that these representations 
belong necessarily to each other, in the empirical intui- 
tion, but that they belong to each other by means of 
the necessary unity of apperception in the synthesis of 
intuitions, that is, according to the principles of the ob- 
jective determination of all representations, so far as 
any cognition is to arise from them, these principles 
being all derived from the principle of the transcendental 
unity of apperception. Thus, and thus alone, does the 
relation become a judgment, that is, a relation that is 
valid objectively, and can thus be kept sufficiently dis- 
tinct from the relation of the same representations, if 
it has subjective validity only, for instance, according 



tut no 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 7 1 

to the laws of association. In the latter case, I could 
only say, that if I carry a body I feel the pressure of its 
weight, but not, that it, the body, is heavy, which is 
meant to say that these two representations are con- 
nected together in the object, whatever the state of the 
subject may be, and not only associated or conjoined 
in the perception, however often it may be repeated. 

The manifold which is given us in a sensuous intuition 
is necessarily subject to the original synthetical unity 
of apperception, because by it alone the unity of intui- 
tion becomes possible. That act of the understanding, 
further, by which the manifold of given representations 
(whether intuitions or concepts) is brought under one 
apperception in general, is the logical function of a judg- 
ment. The manifold therefore, so far as it is given in an 
empirical intuition, is determined with regard to one of 
the logical functions of judgment, by which, indeed, it 
is brought to consciousness in general. The categories, 
however, are nothing but these functions of judgment, 
so far as the manifold of a given intuition is determined 
with respect to them. Therefore the manifold in any 
given intuition is naturally subject to the categories. 

The manifold, contained in an intuition which I call 
my own, is represented through the synthesis of the 
understanding, as belonging to the necessary unity of 
self-consciousness, and this takes place through the 
category. 

This category indicates, therefore, that the empirical 
consciousness of the manifold, given in any intuition, 
is subject to a pure self-consciousness a priori, in the 
same manner as the empirical intuition is subject to a 



72 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

pure sensuous intuition which likewise takes place a 
priori. 

In the above proposition a beginning is made of a de- 
duction of the pure concepts of the understanding. In 
this deduction, as the categories arise in the understand- 
ing only, independent of all sensibility, Kant thinks he 
ought not to take any account as yet of the manner in 
which the manifold is given for an empirical intuition, 
but attend exclusively to the unity which, by means of 
the category, enters into the intuition through the under- 
standing. In what follows he proposes to show, from the 
manner in which the empirical intuition is given in sen- 
sibility, that its unity is no other than that which is 
prescribed by the category to the manifold of any given 
intuition. Thus only, that is, by showing their validity 
a priori with respect to all objects of our senses, the 
purpose of our deduction will be fully attained. 

There is one thing, however, of which, in the above 
demonstration, Kant says, I could not make abstraction: 
namely, that the manifold for an intuition must be given 
antecedently to the synthesis of the understanding, and 
independently of it; — how, remains uncertain. For if 
I were to imagine an understanding, itself intuitive (for 
instance, a divine understanding, which should not repre- 
sent to itself given objects, but produce them at once by 
his representation), the categories would have no mean- 
ing with respect to such cognition. They are merely rules 
for an understanding whose whole power consists in 
thinking, that is, in the act of bringing the synthesis of 
the manifold, which is given to it in intuition from else- 
where, to the unity of apperception; an understanding 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 73 

which therefore knows nothing by itself, but connects 
only and arranges the material for cognition, that is, 
the intuition which must be given to it by the object. 
This peculiarity of our understanding of producing unity 
of apperception a priori by means of the categories only, 
and again by such and so many, can not be further ex- 
plained, any more than why time and space are the only 
forms of a possible intuition for us. 

We have seen that to think an object is not the same 
as to know an object. In order to know an object, we 
must have the concept by which any object is thought 
(the category), and likewise the intuition by which it 
is given. If no corresponding intuition could be given 
to a concept, it would still be a thought, so far as its form 
is concerned: but it would be without an object, and no 
knowledge of anything would be possible by it, because, 
so far as I know, there would be nothing, and there could 
be nothing, to which my thought could be referred. Now 
the only possible intuition for us is sensuous; the thought 
of any object, therefore, by means of a pure concept 
of the understanding, can with us become knowledge 
only, if it is referred to objects of the senses. Sensuous 
intuition is either pure (space and time), or empirical, 
that is, if it is an intuition of that which is represented in 
space and time, through sensation as immediately real. 
By means of pure intuition we can gain knowledge a priori 
of things as phenomena (in mathematics), but only so 
far as their form is concerned; but whether there are 
things which must be perceived, according to that form, 
remains unsettled. Mathematical concepts, by them- 
selves, therefore, are not yet knowledge, except under 



74 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the supposition that there are things which admit of 
being represented by us, according to the form of that 
pure sensuous intuition only. Consequently, as things 
in space and time are only given as perceptions (as repre- 
sentations accompanied by sensations), that is, through 
empirical representations, the pure concepts of the under- 
standing, even if applied to intuitions a priori, as in 
mathematics, give us knowledge in so far only as these 
pure intuitions, and therefore through them the concepts 
of the understanding also, can be applied to empirical 
intuitions. Consequently the categories, by means of 
intuition, do not give us any knowledge of things, except 
under the supposition of their possible application to 
empirical intuition; they serve, in short, for the possibility 
of empirical knowledge only, which is called experience. 
From this it follows that the categories admit of no other 
employment for the cognition of things, except so far 
only as these are taken as objects of possible experience. 
The foregoing proposition is of the greatest importance, 
for it determines the limits of the employment of the 
pure concepts of the understanding with reference to 
objects, in the same manner as the transcendental 
^Esthetic determined the limits of the employment of 
the pure form of our sensuous intuition. Space and time 
are conditions of the possibility of how objects can be 
given to us, so far only as objects of the senses, therefore 
of experience, are concerned. Beyond these limits they 
represent nothing, for they belong only to the senses, 
and have no reality beyond them. Pure concepts of the 
understanding are free from this limitation, and extend 
to objects of intuition in general, whether that intui- 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 75 

tion be like our own or not, if only it is sensuous and 
not intellectual. This further extension, however, of 
concepts beyond our sensuous intuition, is of no avail 
to us; for they are in that case empty concepts of objects, 
and the concepts do not even enable us to say, whether 
such objects be possible or not. They are mere forms 
of thought, without objective reality: because we have 
no intuition at hand to which the synthetical unity of 
apperception, which is contained in the concepts alone, 
could be applied, so that they might determine an object. 
Nothing can give them sense and meaning, except our 
sensuous and empirical intuition. 

If, therefore, we assume an object of a non-sensuous in- 
tuition as given, we may, no doubt, determine it through 
all the predicates, which follow from the supposition that 
nothing belonging to sensuous intuition belongs to it, that, 
therefore, it is not extended, or not in space, that its 
duration is not time, that no change (succession of de- 
terminations in time) is to be met in it, etc. But we can 
hardly call this knowledge, if we only indicate how the 
intuition of an object is not, without being able to say 
what is contained in it, for, in that case, I have not repre- 
sented the possibility of an object, corresponding to my 
pure concept of the understanding, because I could give 
no intuition corresponding to it, but could only say that 
our intuition did not apply to it. But what is the most 
important is this, that not even a single category could 
be applied to such a thing; as, for instance, the concept 
of substance, that is, of something that can exist as a 
subject only, but never as a mere predicate. For I do 
not know whether there can be anything corresponding 



7 6 

to such a determination of thought, unless empirical 
intuition supplies the case for its application. 

The pure concepts of the understanding refer, through 
the mere understanding, to objects of intuition, whether 
it be our own, or any other, if only sensuous intuition, 
but they are, for that very reason, mere forms of thought, 
by which no definite object can be known. The syn- 
thesis, or connection of the manifold in them, referred 
only to the unity of apperception, and became thus the 
ground of the possibility of knowledge a priori, so far 
as it rests on the understanding, and is therefore not 
only transcendental, but also purely intellectual. Now 
as there exists in us a certain form of sensuous intuition 
a priori, which rests on the receptivity of the faculty 
of representation, the understanding, as spontaneity, 
is able to determine the internal sense through the 
manifold of given representations, according to the 
synthetical unity of apperception, and can thus think 
synthetical unity of the apperception of the manifold 
of sensuous intuition a priori, as the condition to which 
all objects of our intuition must necessarily be subject. 
Thus the categories, though pure forms of thought, 
receive objective reality, that is, application to objects 
which can be given to us in intuition, but as phenomena 
only; for it is with reference to them alone that we are 
capable of intuition a priori. 

This synthesis of the manifold of sensuous intuition, 
which is possible and necessary a priori, may be called 
figurative {synthesis speciosa), in order to distinguish it 
from that which is thought in the mere category, with 
reference to the manifold of an intuition in general, and 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 77 

is called intellectual synthesis {synthesis intellectualis) . 
Both are transcendental, not only because they them- 
selves are carried out a priori, but because they establish 
also the possibility of other knowledge a priori. 

But this figurative synthesis, if it refers to the original 
synthetical unity of apperception only, that is, to that 
transcendental unity which is thought in the categories, 
must be called the transcendental synthesis of the faculty 
of imagination, in order thus to distinguish it from the 
purely intellectual synthesis. Imagination is the faculty 
of representing an object even without its presence in 
intuition. As all our intuition is sensuous, the faculty 
of imagination belongs, on account of the subjective 
condition under which alone it can give a corresponding 
intuition to the concepts of the understanding, to our 
sensibility. As, however, its synthesis is an act of spon- 
taneity, determining, and not, like the senses, deter- 
minable only, and therefore able to determine a priori 
the senses, so far as their form is concerned, according 
to the unity of apperception, the faculty of imagination 
is, so far, a faculty of determining our sensibility a priori, 
so that the synthesis of the intuitions, according to the 
categories, must be the transcendental synthesis of the 
faculty of imagination. This is an effect, produced by 
the understanding on our sensibility, and the first appli- 
cation of it (and at the same time the ground of all others) 
to objects of the intuition which is only possible to us. 
As figurative, it is distinguished from the intellectual 
synthesis, which takes place by the understanding only, 
without the aid of the faculty of imagination. In so 
far as imagination is spontaneity, Kant calls it, occa- 



78 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

sionally, productive imagination: distinguishing it from 
the reproductive, which in its synthesis is subject to em- 
pirical laws only, namely, those of association, and which 
is of no help for the explanation of the possibility of 
knowledge a priori, belonging, therefore, to psychology, 
and not to transcendental philosophy. 

This is the proper place for trying to account for the 
paradox, which must have struck everybody in the 
exposition of the form of the internal sense; namely, 
how that sense represents to the consciousness even 
ourselves, not as we are in ourselves, but as we appear 
to ourselves, because we perceive ourselves only as we 
are affected internally. This seems to be contradictory, 
because we should thus be in a passive relation to our- 
selves; and for this reason the founders of the systems of 
psychology have preferred to represent the internal sense 
as identical with the faculty of apperception, while we 
have carefully distinguished the two. 

What determines the internal sense is the understand- 
ing, and its original power of connecting the manifold 
of intuition, that is, of bringing it under one appercep- 
tion, this being the very ground of the possibility of the 
understanding. As in us men the understanding is not 
itself an intuitive faculty, and could not, even if intui- 
tions were given in our sensibility, take them into itself, 
in order to connect, as it were, the manifold of its own 
intuition, the synthesis of the understanding, if con- 
sidered by itself alone, is nothing but the unity of action, 
of which it is conscious without sensibility also, but 
through which the understanding is able to determine 
that sensibility internally, with respect to the manifold 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 79 

which may be given to it (the understanding) according 
to the form of its intuition. The understanding, there- 
fore, exercises its activity, under the name of a tran- 
scendental synthesis of the faculty of imagination, on the 
passive subject to which it belongs as a faculty, and we 
are right in saying that the internal sense is affected by 
that activity. The apperception with its synthetical 
unity is so far from being identical with the internal 
sense, that, as the source of all synthesis, it rather applies, 
under the name of the categories, to the manifold of 
intuitions in general, that is, to objects in general before 
all sensuous intuition; while the internal sense, on the 
contrary, contains the mere form of intuition, but with- 
out any connection of the manifold in it, and therefore, 
as yet, no definite intuition, which becomes possible 
only through the consciousness of the determination 
of the internal sense by the transcendental act of the 
faculty of imagination (the synthetical influence of the 
understanding on the internal sense) which I have called 
the figurative synthesis. 

This we can always perceive in ourselves. We can 
not think a line without drawing it in thought; we can 
not think a circle without describing it; we can not repre- 
sent, at all, the three dimensions of space, without plac- 
ing, from the same point, three lines perpendicularly on 
each other; nay, we can not even represent time, except 
by attending, during our drawing a straight line (which 
is meant to be the external figurative representation of 
time) to the act of the synthesis of the manifold only by 
which we successively determine the internal sense, and 
thereby to the succession of that determination in it. 



80 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

It is really motion, as the act of the subject (not as the 
determination of an object), therefore the synthesis of 
the manifold in space (abstraction being made of space, 
and our attention fixed on the act only by which we 
determine the internal sense, according to its form), 
which first produces the very concept of succession. The 
understanding does not, therefore, find in the internal 
sense such a connection of the manifold, but produces it 
by affecting the internal sense. It may seem difficult 
to understand how the thinking ego can be different from 
the ego which sees or perceives itself (other modes of 
intuition being at least conceivable), and yet identical 
with the latter as the same subject, and how, therefore, 
I can say: I, as intelligence and thinking subject, know 
myself as an object thought so far as being given to myself 
in intuition also, but like other phenomena, not as I am 
to the understanding, but only as I appear to myself. 
In reality, however, this is neither more nor less difficult 
than how I can be, to myself, an object, and, more es- 
pecially, an object of intuition and of internal percep- 
tions. But that this must really be so, can clearly be 
shown — if only we admit space to be merely a pure form 
of the phenomena of the external senses — by the fact 
that we can not represent to ourselves time, which is 
no object of external intuition, in any other way than 
under the image of a line which we draw, a mode of 
representation without which we could not realize the 
unity of its dimension; or again by this other fact that 
we must always derive the determination of the length 
of time, or of points of time for all our internal percep- 
tions, from that which is represented to us as changeable 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 8 1 

by external things, and have, therefore, to arrange the 
determinations of the internal sense as phenomena in 
time, in exactly the same way in which we arrange the 
determinations of the external senses in space. If, then, 
with regard to the latter, we admit that by them we 
know objects so far only as we are affected externally, 
we must also admit, with regard to the internal sense, 
that by it we only are, or perceive ourselves, as we are in- 
ternally affected by ourselves; in other words, that with 
regard to internal intuition we know our own self as a 
phenomenon only, and not as it is by itself. 

In the transcendental synthesis, however, of the 
manifold of representations in general, and therefore in 
the original synthetical unity of apperception, I am 
conscious of myself, neither as I appear to myself, nor 
as I am in myself, but only that I am. This representa- 
tion is an act of thought, not of intuition. Now, in order 
to know ourselves, we require, besides the act of think- 
ing, which brings the manifold of every possible intuition 
to the unity of apperception, a definite kind of intuition 
also by which that manifold is given, and thus, though 
my own existence is not phenomenal (much less a mere 
illusion), yet the determination of my existence can only 
take place according to the form of the internal sense, 
and in that special manner in which the manifold, which 
I connect, is given in the internal intuition. This shows 
that I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but only as 
I appear to myself. The consciousness of oneself is 
therefore very far from being a knowledge of oneself, in 
spite of all the categories which constitute the thinking 
of an object in general, by means of the connection of the 



82 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

manifold in an apperception. As for the knowledge of 
an object different from myself I require, besides the 
thinking of an object in general (in a category), an 
intuition also, to determine that general concept, I re- 
quire for the knowledge of my own self, besides con- 
sciousness, or besides my thinking myself, an intuition 
also of the manifold in me, to determine that thought. 
I exist, therefore, as such an intelligence, which is sim- 
ply conscious of its power of connection, but with re- 
spect to the manifold that has to be connected, is sub- 
ject to a limiting condition which is called the internal 
sense, according to which that connection can only be- 
come perceptible in relations of time, which lie entirely 
outside the concepts of the understanding. Such an in- 
telligence, therefore, can only know itself as it appears 
to itself in an intuition (which can not be intellectual and 
given by the understanding itself), and not as it would 
know itself, if its intuition were intellectual. 

In the metaphysical deduction of the categories their 
a priori origin was proved by their complete accordance 
with the general logical functions of thought, while in 
their transcendental deduction Kant established their 
possibility as knowledge a priori of objects of an intui- 
tion in general. Now he has to explain the possibility 
of our knowing a priori, by means of the categories, 
whatever objects may come before our senses, and this 
not according to the form of their intuition, but accord- 
ing to the laws of their connection, and of our thus pre- 
scribing laws to nature, nay, making nature possible. 
Unless they were adequate to that purpose, we could 
not understand how everything that may come before 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 83 

our senses must be subject to laws which have their 
origin a priori in the understanding alone. 

First of all, Kant observes that by the synthesis of 
apprehension he understands the connection of the mani- 
fold in an empirical intuition, by which perception, that 
is, empirical consciousness of it (as phenomenal), be- 
comes possible. 

We have forms of the external as well as the internal 
intuition a priori, in our representations of space and 
time: and to these the synthesis of the apprehension of 
the manifold in phenomena must always conform, be- 
cause it can take place according to that form only. 
Time and space, however, are represented a priori, not 
only as forms of sensuous intuition, but as intuitions 
themselves (containing a manifold), and therefore with 
the determination of the unity of that manifold in them.* 
Therefore unity of the synthesis of the manifold without 
or within us, and consequently a connection to which 
everything that is to be represented as determined in 

* Kant's note: Space, represented as an object (as required in 
geometry), contains more than the mere form of intuition, namely, 
the comprehension of the manifold, which is given according to the 
form of sensibility, into a perceptible (intuitable) representation, so 
that the form of intuition gives the manifold only, while the 
formal intuition gives unity of representation. In the Esthetic 
I had simply ascribed this unity to sensibility, in order to show 
that it precedes all concepts, though it presupposes a synthesis 
not belonging to the senses, and by which all concepts of space 
and time become first possible. For as by that synthesis (the 
understanding determining the sensibility) space and time are 
first given as intuitions, the unity of that intuition a priori belongs 
to space and time, and not to the concept of the understand- 
ing. 



84 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

space and time must conform, is given a priori as the 
condition of the synthesis of all apprehension simul- 
taneously with the intuitions, not in them, and that 
synthetical unity can be no other but that of the con- 
nection of the manifold of any intuition whatsoever in an 
original consciousness, according to the categories, only 
applied to our sensuous intuition. Consequently, all 
synthesis, without which even perception would be im- 
possible, is subject to the categories; and as experience 
consists of knowledge by means of connected perceptions, 
the categories are conditions of the possibility of ex- 
perience, and valid therefore a priori also for all objects 
of experience. 

If, for instance, I raise the empirical intuition of a 
house, through the apprehension of the manifold con- 
tained therein, into a perception, the necessary unity of 
space and of external sensuous intuition in general is 
presupposed, and I draw, as it were, the shape of the 
house according to that synthetical unity of the manifold 
in space. But this very synthetical unity, if I make 
abstraction of the form of space, has its seat in the 
understanding, and is in fact the category of the synthesis 
of the homogeneous in intuition in general: that is, the 
category of quantity, to which that synthesis of appre- 
hension, that is, the perception, must always conform.* 

* Kant's note: In this manner it is proved that the synthesis of 
apprehension, which is empirical, must necessarily conform to the 
synthesis of apperception, which is intellectual, and contained in 
the category entirely a priori. It is one and the same spontaneity, 
which there, under the name of imagination, and here, under the 
name of understanding, brings connection into the manifold of in- 
tuition. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 85 

Or if, to take another example, I perceive the freezing 
of water, I apprehend two states (that of fluidity and 
that of solidity), and these as standing to each other in 
a relation of time. But in the time, which as internal 
intuition I make the foundation of the phenomenon, I 
represent to myself necessarily synthetical unity of the 
manifold, without which that relation could not be 
given as determined in an intuition (with reference to the 
succession of time). That synthetical unity, however, as 
a condition a priori, under which I connect the manifold 
of any intuition, turns out to be, if I make abstraction 
of the permanent form of my intuition, namely, of time, 
the category of cause, through which, if I apply it to my 
sensibility, I determine everything that happens, according 
to its relation in time. Thus the apprehension in such 
an event, and that event itself considered as a possible 
perception, is subject to the concept of the relation of 
cause and effect. The same applies to all other cases. 

Categories are concepts which a priori prescribe laws 
to all phenomena, and therefore to nature as the sum 
total of all phenomena (natura materialiter spectata) . The 
question therefore arises, as these laws are not derived 
from nature, nor conform to it as their model (in which 
case they would be empirical only), how we can under- 
stand that nature should conform to them, that is, how 
they can determine a priori the connection of the mani- 
fold in nature, without taking that connection from 
nature. The solution of that riddle is this. 

It is no more surprising that the laws of phenomena in 
nature must agree with the understanding and its form 
a priori, that is, with its power of connecting the mani- 



86 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

fold in general, than that the phenomena themselves 
must agree with the form of sensuous intuition a priori. 
For laws exist as little in phenomena themselves, but 
relatively only, with respect to the subject to which, 
so far as it has understanding, the phenomena belong, 
as phenomena exist in themselves, but relatively only, 
with respect to the same being so far as it has senses. 
Things in themselves would necessarily possess their 
conformity to the law, independent also of any under- 
standing by which they are known. But phenomena are 
only representations of things, unknown as to what they 
may be in themselves. As mere representations they 
are subject to no law of connection, except that which 
is prescribed by the connecting faculty. Now that 
which connects the manifold of sensuous intuition is the 
faculty of imagination, which receives from the under- 
standing the unity of its intellectual synthesis, and from 
sensibility the manifoldness of apprehension. Thus, 
as all possible perceptions depend on the synthesis of 
apprehension, and that synthesis itself, that empirical 
synthesis, depends on the transcendental, and, there- 
fore, on the categories, it follows that all possible per- 
ceptions, everything in fact that can come to the empiri- 
cal consciousness, that is, all phenomena of nature, 
must, so far as their connection is concerned, be subject 
to the categories. On these categories, therefore, nature 
(considered as nature in general) depends, as on the 
original ground of its necessary conformity to law (as 
natura formaliter spectata). Beyond the laws, on which 
nature in general, as a lawful order of phenomena in 
space and time depends, the pure faculty of the under- 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 87 

standing is incapable of prescribing a priori, by means 
of mere categories, laws to phenomena. Special laws, 
therefore, as they refer to phenomena which are em- 
pirically determined, can not be completely derived from 
the categories, although they are all subject to them. 
Experience must be superadded in order to know such 
special laws: while those other a priori laws inform us 
only with regard to experience in general, and what can 
be known as an object of it. 

We can not think any object except by means of the 
categories; we can not know any object that has been 
thought, except by means of intuitions, corresponding 
to those concepts. Now all our intuitions are sensuous, 
and this knowledge, so far as its object is given, is em- 
pirical. But empirical knowledge is experience, and 
therefore no knowledge a priori is possible to us, except 
of objects of possible experience alone. 

This knowledge, however, though limited to objects 
of experience, is not, therefore, entirely derived from 
experience, for both the pure intuitions and the pure 
concepts of the understanding are elements of knowledge 
which exist in us a priori. Now there are only two ways 
in which a necessary harmony of experience with the 
concepts of its objects can be conceived; either experience 
makes these concepts possible, or these concepts make 
experience possible. The former will not hold good with 
respect to the categories (nor with pure sensuous intui- 
tion), for they are concepts a priori, and therefore inde- 
pendent of experience. To ascribe to them an empirical 
origin, would be to admit a kind of generatio cequivoca. 
There remains, therefore, the second alternative only 



88 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

(a kind of system of the epigenesis of pure reason), 
namely, that the categories, on the part of the under- 
standing, contain the grounds of the possibility of all 
experience in general. How they render experience pos- 
sible, and what principles of the possibility of experience 
they supply in their employment on phenomena, will 
be shown more fully in the following chapter on the 
transcendental employment of the faculty of judgment. 
Some one might propose to adopt a middle way be- 
tween the two, namely, that the categories are neither 
self-produced first principles a priori of our knowledge, 
nor derived from experience, but subjective dispositions 
of thought, implanted in us with our existence, and so 
arranged by our Creator that their employment should 
accurately agree with the laws of nature, which deter- 
mine experience (a kind of system of preformation of pure 
reason) . But, in that case, not only would there be no 
end of such an hypothesis, so that no one could know 
how far the supposition of predetermined dispositions 
to future judgments might be carried, but there is this 
decided objection against that middle course that, by 
adopting it, the categories would lose that necessity 
which is essential to them. Thus the concept of cause, 
which asserts, under a presupposed condition, the neces- 
sity of an effect, would become false, if it rested only on 
some subjective necessity implanted in us of connecting 
certain empirical representations according to the rule 
of causal relation. I should not be able to say that the 
effect is connected with the cause in the object (that is, 
by necessity), but only, I am so constituted that I can 
not think these representations as connected in any 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 89 

other way. This is exactly what the sceptic most de- 
sires, for in that case all our knowledge, resting on the 
supposed objective validity of our judgments, is nothing 
but mere illusion, nor would there be wanting people to 
say they know nothing of such subjective necessity 
(which can only be felt) ; and at all events we could not 
quarrel with anybody about what depends only on the 
manner in which his own subject is organized. 

The deduction of the pure concepts of the understand-^ 
ing (and with them of all theoretical knowledge a priori) 
consists in representing them as principles of the possi- 
bility of experience, and in representing experience as 
the determination of phenomena in space and time, — " 
and, lastly, in representing that determination as de- 
pending on the principle of the original synthetical 
unity of apperception, as the form of the understanding, 
applied to space and time, as the original forms of sensi- 
bility. 

In this deduction Kant shows that categories as forms 
of synthesis must be presupposed in order to explain the 
consciousness of a world of objects. It is obvious, fur- 
thermore, that it is impossible to have self-consciousness 
without a connected consciousness of objects. No ma- 
terial elements can be present to me as recognized parts 
of my consciousness unless they are capable of being 
united with the other parts of my consciousness as ele- 
ments in the consciousness of an objective world. This 
means that nothing can be an object for a self without 
conforming to the conditions of self-consciousness. Any- 
thing that we are ever able to know, therefore, must be 



9° 

known in such a way that self-consciousness, the con- 
sciousness of a self in relation to all its objects, shall be 
possible. Even though perceptions of objects precede 
such self-consciousness, it still remains true that they 
must conform to this requirement. From this point of 
view, we see why it is possible to say that the unity of 
self must be taken as a pre-condition of all experience. 
This enables us to say that the manifold of perception 
must be present to one subject in such a way as to make 
possible the consciousness of one self in relation to that 
manifold. Even supposing perceptions to be given prior 
to, and independent of the consciousness of self with 
its principles for the determination of objects, it is never- 
theless true that there must be a pre-established harmony 
between perceptions and the principles of consciousness. 
This implies that sense perceptions conform to certain 
synthetic principles and that the conscious application 
of these synthetic principles results in the consciousness 
of an objective order, the correlative of self-consciousness. 
Thus the principles or categories involved in such an 
objective world are justified.* 

How are we to understand the objective deduction 
in which Kant justifies the categories by asserting that 
without them nature and conscious experience as we 
know them would be impossible? Perhaps we can state 
the matter in this way. Reflective scientific conscious- 
ness arises out of unrerlective and unscientific conscious- 
ness. It gives a validity and necessity which was pre- 
viously lacking. But it develops out of the other as a 
natural outgrowth. The conditions were all there though 
* E. Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. I, pp. 347, ff . 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 9 1 

consciousness was not fully aware of the fact. There 
are synthetic principles in phenomena as the necessary 
ground of their existence as phenomena, and these neces- 
sary principles are similar to the categories. In other 
words, experience, objective and subjective, implies 
principles of synthesis or of connection in all its parts. 
External experience means objects related to each other 
and this conditions and is conditioned by the unity of 
consciousness. The two poles of experience are or- 
ganically connected. This is the point of departure 
from which reflective experience arises and upon which 
it is based. The grounds of necessity and validity are 
already present in the starting point, but man is not 
fully conscious of all this, even though he more or less 
instinctively turns to objective reality as the criterion 
or test of the truth of his ideas. His ideas must conform 
to a reality which has an existence not dependent upon 
his subjective thought and to which his subjective 
thought must conform if it is to think the truth. What 
is our justification for asserting that the categories are 
the laws of nature, and hence that they are justified? It 
is this: when the experience of human beings is reduced 
to its pure framework, when all that is subjective is 
removed or discounted, human experience in general 
is found to involve certain fundamental principles or 
conceptions. These are true for consciousness in general 
and are involved in all conscious experience, that is, 
they are in no sense individual contributions. Hence 
they depend upon the ultimate conditioning factors 
upon which all human conscious beings depend. Human 
beings may be quite unaware of the necessity or even of 



92 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the presence of these factors, but when they turn upon 
their experience and attempt to rationalize it they find 
these principles and find themselves justified in using 
them. In other words, it seems necessary to assume these 
principles as the very foundation of all conscious ex- 
perience, that is, they are the laws of nature. Conscious- 
ness and objectivity as correlatives arise together out 
of these conditions and go forward to the position of 
full validity and necessity, but in the entire process our 
results are dependent upon and arise out of the original 
conditions. 

If Kant's objective deduction of the categories be 
considered by itself, one can easily get a wrong impres- 
sion of its true significance. It might then be taken as 
justifying a position radically different from that im- 
plied by the greater part of the Critique. Once started 
on the train of thought involved by this point of view, 
it is natural that everything opposed to such a view 
should be looked upon as an inconsistency in Kant either 
to be explained away or to be ignored. The reason for 
this difficulty of interpretation is not far to seek. It 
can be baldly stated in this way: all unity in experience 
implies unity in thought; without some coherence and 
connection in consciousness, no experience of any sort; 
consciousness and objective experience are correlatives 
which must not be sundered. Complete unity of thought 
and the thought object is the highest point or ideal of 
consciousness. It is with this problem that Kant is 
struggling and his attempts to do full justice to this 
situation have laid him open to much false criticism and 
interpretation. It should be noted that there is no neces- 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 93 

sary inconsistency involved in holding, on the one hand, 
that both consciousness and nature depend upon non- 
subjective conditions, and, on the other hand, maintain- 
ing that unity in nature and in consciousness are mu- 
tually determining conditions. Neither unity without 
nor unity within can exist without the other; they are 
organically connected. Kant's constant insistence here 
upon the truth, that no one of these necessary elements 
involved in an experience such as ours can be correctly 
understood in isolation from the others, and his special 
insistence upon the necessity for unity of consciousness 
to which all conscious experiences point and lead, may 
easily be misunderstood. The unity of the self may 
then be taken to mean that such unity either actually 
or logically precedes and, in either case, projects itself 
into nature. In other words, when Kant says that the 
unity of consciousness is the highest condition of all 
activity of thought, one may be misled and infer that 
Kant believed it to be the original producing cause. 
Now it is legitimate to assume that a degree of unity is 
implied at every point in the development of conscious- 
ness and its corresponding development of objective 
knowledge, and it is also true that the desire for a greater 
unity is the constant demand of all conscious activity. 
But this in no wise militates against the view that the 
entire situation arises out of more ultimate conditions. 
It would seem that what Kant means is only this : some 
unity of consciousness is a fact and a necessary fact 
implied by all experience. Therefore all our attempts at 
explanation must keep it in mind as something not to 
be explained away. To ignore this condition would be 



94 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

to ignore a factor absolutely essential to the existence of 
the phenomenal world. To admit this, however, need 
not necessarily imply that consciousness acting as an 
ultimate principle actually produces the objective world. 
It would seem better to take a more conservative view 
and say with Kant that conscious experience and its 
necessary correlative, objective existence, depend for 
all that we can prove to the contrary upon more ulti- 
mate conditions. We must not overlook, however, that 
consciousness is necessarily connected with and involved 
by that which gives laws to nature.* 

By reason of the difficulty of the thought, and the com- 
plexity of the two deductions of the categories, it may 
be considered advisable to sum up in a general way in 
what position Kant's thought up to this time has left us. 

After Hume it was possible to say that from experience 
we get so much and no more, consequently all that is 
contained in the phenomenal world over and above the 
experience given, must come from elsewhere. This is the 
position taken by Kant. Profiting by Hume's results, 
Kant saw, first, that experience produced by real things 
is necessary, secondly, that experience alone is incapable 
of accounting for our phenomenal world and the knowl- 
edge which we have concerning this world, thirdly, that 
the noumenal conditions of the self must somehow fur- 
nish the otherwise lacking conditions. 

Furthermore, it must be remembered that Hume had 

pointed out some, at least, of the elements of knowledge 

which experience can not give, and had admitted that we 

can not help thinking in terms of substance and causality. 

* Cf. H. Vaihinger, Die Philosophic des Als-Ob, pp. 284, ff. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 95 

As radical empiricist he in the end reduced these ideas 
to illusions, but as observer of facts he admitted that 
we can not get rid of them. From his point of view 
they are necessary illusions dependent upon the structure 
of the mind. Kant's great work consists in proving that 
without Hume's so-called necessary illusions no knowl- 
edge and no experience are possible. 

In the aesthetic Kant begins his solution of this prob- 
lem by giving a tentative account of two important 
elements, space and time, which can not come from expe- 
rience. Here Kant seems to hold that objects can be 
given without any activity on the part of the subject. 
The only requirement, apparently, is that objects should 
conform to certain fixed forms, that is, they must be 
run into moulds furnished by the subject. The analytic, 
however, throws further light on this problem by proving 
the impossibility of having an object without an active 
connecting of elements. In other words, no object can 
be given without something corresponding to an act 
of synthesis which binds the elements together and gives 
the finished product under the forms of space and time. 

This last statement brings us to the deduction of the 
categories. In the subjective deduction Kant shows how 
the subjective laws employed by the associationists 
presuppose transcendental conditions. It is no doubt 
true that we have representations, but whatever the 
cause of such representations may be, it is necessary 
that they should be subject to time, the formal condition 
of the inner sense. The unity of the representation in- 
volves a succession of distinct impressions and the bind- 
ing of these together into a unity. In short, the subjec- 



96 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

tive principles assumed by the associationists to account 
for the bringing about of such unity, really include as 
presuppositions for their existence more fundamental 
synthetic processes or transcendental principles of unity. 
This means that the explanation which the associationists 
give does not account for the unity at all, but that there 
must be an underlying noumenal unity acting through 
these synthetic processes. The empirical subjective unity 
of consciousness is neither self-explanatory, nor can it be 
explained by laws of association, for the laws of associa- 
tion presuppose some sort of unity which is functioning 
within, as well as an orderly — and by the associationists 
unexplained — uniformity without. This much at least 
seems to be required by a mere perceptual experience 
which as yet is not knowledge in the true sense. To 
repeat, in order to have the subjective empirical unity 
of consciousness, we must have a synthesis of apprehen- 
sion in intuition, a synthesis of reproduction in imagina- 
tion, and a synthesis of recognition in concepts. And 
to have the fulfilment of these conditions there must be 
unity of action within and uniformity of nature without. 
At a stage like the preceding we have neither true 
experience nor true knowledge. Such a stage may 
correspond to animal experience. Further conditions 
must be postulated to account for an experience such as 
ours, and this is essentially the business of the objective 
deduction. Kant's problem here is two-fold, on the one 
hand he wishes to show the logical laws and presupposi- 
tions of our knowledge, on the other hand he seeks to 
indicate, so far as possible, the basal noumenal conditions 
underlying both consciousness and phenomenal objects. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 97 

The highest formal condition is the unity of con- 
sciousness or personal identity by which is meant 
merely that I must be able to think my various ex- 
periences together. Everything which it is ever possible 
for me to experience must conform to this condition.* 
But I have certain definite ways of thinking or judging 
and these ways are the categories. The justification of 
these categories depends upon the fact that without 
them I could have no connected external experience and 
therefore no connected experience or self. Until these 
categories are consciously used our knowledge lacks the 
universality and necessity which seems to be a character- 
istic of scientific knowledge. Up to this point we are 
unconscious of the transcendental conditions which are 
involved. And we, in formulating such knowledge as 
we have at this level, seem to be dependent upon the 
empirical laws of association. Hence these synthetical 
processes furnish the conditions necessary to account 
for objects and, at the same time, for a self which may 
become aware of itself. Though according to Kant we 
can not know either the objects or the self as they are 
in themselves but only that they are. The fundamental 
point insisted upon by Kant is that object and conscious- 
ness are correlatives. No consciousness without objects 
and no objects without consciousness. This, however, 
holds merely within the phenomenal realm. 

This brings us to another point, namely, the given of 
the aesthetic. It has been pointed out that we must 
assume synthetic processes which are working blindly 

* That is, there must be the potentiality of self-consciousness 
though the I think need not consciously accompany all experience. 



98 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

in order to account for consciousness and for what is 
phenomenally inseparably connected with it, objects. 
This enables us to see a reason why all objects of sense 
perception have the appearance of being given. These 
sense perceptions result partly from processes not con- 
scious, and when consciousness appears on the scene, the 
given is already there as the result of prior synthetic 
processes. 

But there is more in the Kantian position than this. 
It has just been said that phenomenal consciousness is 
dependent upon those underlying processes. But so 
also are space and time for they are the product of an 
activity whereby the manifold of sense is brought to- 
gether. When we get to a higher level and have conscious 
synthesis which gives us necessary knowledge, the same 
mysterious process continues. Objects are still given; 
consciousness does not consciously produce them. If 
we would say that they are produced by mind, then we 
must mean by mind something that includes more than 
consciousness. We may become conscious of the results, 
and concepts corresponding to the processes involved 
may be formed, but of anything more we are rarely 
conscious. 

Certain important conclusions can now be drawn. 
Noumenal conditions of the self necessitate the use of the 
forms, space and time and the categories, while the self 
known by us is determined in its existence by its environ- 
ment both past and present. It may gradually, and with 
a vast amount of work, come to a clearer and clearer 
knowledge of the phenomenal world. Here it uses con- 
ceptions which must conform to the formal unity of 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 99 

consciousness. In its interpretations of nature it may 
advance far and increasingly organize the phenomena, 
but go as far as it may, it is no nearer to the ultimate 
nature of reality. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 

BOOK II. ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES 

The analytic of principles is a canon of the faculty of 
judgment, teaching it how to apply to phenomena the 
concepts of the understanding, which contain the condi- 
tion of rules a priori. Kant's transcendental doctrine 
of the faculty of judgment consists of two parts. The 
first treats of the sensuous condition under which alone 
pure concepts of the understanding can be used. This 
is what he calls the schematism of the pure understanding. 
The second part treats of the synthetical judgments, 
which can be derived a priori under these conditions from 
pure concepts of the understanding, and on which all 
knowledge a priori depends. It treats, therefore, of 
the principles of the pure understanding. 

Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Under- 
standing 

In comprehending any object under a concept, the 
representation of the former must be homogeneous with 
the latter. The question here is: how can we apply the 
categories, which are concepts and are a priori, to per- 
ceptions which are intuitions and empirical. There is 
a heterogeneity here which makes the discovery of some 
underlying homogeneous principle necessary, some inter- 
mediate representation which is pure, that is, free from 
all that is empirical, and yet intellectual on the one side, 

ioo 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 101 

and sensuous on the other. Such a representation is the 
transcendental schema. This mediating faculty is the 
imagination working under the form of time. Time is 
the form of the mediating function because it is homo- 
geneous with the categories since it has an a priori 
character, and homogeneous with perception for it is 
contained in every representation of the manifold. It 
is consequently both pure and sensuous. 

To proceed to the categories as schematized. The 
imagination representing quantity under the form of 
time gives us a series of time, namely, number, that is, 
an addition of units. The beginning of the number 
series gives unity; progress in the series gives plurality; 
the series taken as a whole gives totality. Quality rep- 
resented under the form of time gives us the contents of 
time, that is, degree in the filling of time. We have, then, 
reality or time filled, negation or time empty, and limita- 
tion or time partially filled. Relation represented under 
the form of time gives us an order of time. There is per- 
manence of the real in time or substance, orderly succes- 
sion in time or causation, and reciprocal causality of sub- 
stances or reciprocity. Modality represented under the 
form of time gives us the comprehension of time. Agree- 
ment with the conditions of time in general is the schema 
of possibility, existence at a given time is the schema of 
reality, and the existence of an object at all times is the 
schema of necessity. 

Principles of the Pure Understanding 

The preceding section on the schematism of the pure 
concepts of the understanding had as its purpose the 



102 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

statement of the categories in the form which they as- 
sume as real categories of the phenomenal world. The 
problem before us in the Principles is, What are the syn- 
thetic a priori judgments which the categories place us in 
a position to make with regard to nature? In the trans- 
cendental deduction of space and time, Kant pointed 
out that from their a priority could be deduced other 
necessary principles, e. g. some mathematical principles. 
So here, with regard to the categories, Kant now asks, 
What necessary statements concerning some of the prin- 
ciples of physical science are we enabled to make on the 
basis of the categories? In the course of the discussion, 
Kant considers, among others, these fundamental no- 
tions: matter, causality, and nature as an interrelated 
system. His discussion of these, however, is not always 
clearly evident on account of the artificial machinery 
gotten from formal logic which he uses as the outline of 
his treatment. 

The table of the categories is the natural clue to the 
principles in so far as they are merely the rule of objec- 
tively applying the categories. 

The principles are 

I. 

Axioms of Intuition. 

II. III. 

Anticipations of Perception. Analogies of Experience. 

IV. 

Postulates of Empirical Thought in General. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC IO3 

I. Axioms of Intuition. Their principle is: All 
intuitions are extensive quantities. 

All phenomena contain, so far as their form is con- 
cerned, an intuition in space and time, which forms the 
a priori foundation of all of them. They can not, there- 
fore, be apprehended, that is, received into empirical 
consciousness, except through the synthesis of the man- 
ifold, by which the representations of a definite space 
or time are produced, that is, through the synthesis of 
the homogeneous, and the consciousness of the syn- 
thetical unity of the manifold. Now the consciousness 
of the manifold and homogeneous in intuition, so far as 
by it the representation of an object is first rendered 
possible, is the concept of quantity. Therefore even 
the perception of an object as a phenomenon is possible 
only through the same synthetical unity of the manifold 
of the given sensuous intuition, by which the unity of 
the composition of the manifold and homogeneous is 
conceived in the concept of a quantity; that is, phenomena 
are always quantities, and extensive quantities; because 
as intuitions in space and time they must be represented 
through the same synthesis through which space and 
time in general are determined. 

In other words, in the Axioms we have a deduction of 
applied mathematics. Since all phenomena are in space 
and time they are extensive in their nature and hence 
they are measurable, divisible and numerable. From 
this it follows that geometry and arithmetic apply to 
phenomena. Hence all that these sciences find true of 
pure space and time will also be found true of phenomena 
so far as they are in space and time. 



104 INTRODUCTION TO EANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

II. Anticipations op Perception. Their principle 
is : In all phenomena the real, which is the object of a 
sensation, has intensive quantity, that is, a degree. 

All knowledge by means of which I may know and 
determine a priori whatever belongs to empirical knowl- 
edge, may be called an anticipation. But as there is 
always in phenomena something which can never be 
known a priori, and constitutes the real difference be- 
tween empirical and a priori knowledge, namely, sensa- 
tion (as matter of perception), it follows that this can 
never be anticipated. The pure determinations, on the 
contrary in space and time, as regards both figure and 
quantity, may be called anticipations of phenomena, 
because they represent a priori whatever may be given 
a posteriori in experience. If, however, there should be 
something in every sensation that could be known 
a priori as sensation in general, even if no particular 
sensation be given, this would, in a very special sense, 
deserve to be called anticipation, because it seems ex- 
traordinary that we should anticipate experience in that 
which concerns the matter of experience and can be de- 
rived from experience only. Yet such is really the case 
in the anticipation of intensive quantity, that is, degree. 

What corresponds in every empirical intuition to 
sensation is reality, what corresponds to its absence is 
negation = o. Every sensation, therefore, and every 
reality in phenomena however small it may be, has a 
degree, that is, an intensive quantity which can always 
be diminished, and there is between reality and negation 
a continuous connection of possible realities, and of 
possible smaller perceptions. Every color, red, for in- 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 105 

stance, has a degree, which, however small, is never the 
smallest; and the same applies to heat, the momentum 
of gravity, etc. 

Kant's dynamical theory of matter is here given a 
transcendental basis. Science has hitherto been mechan- 
ical; it has held to the strict homogeneity of matter, and 
has explained differences of bodies in terms of different 
quantities of homogeneous parts contained in the same 
volume. To this Kant opposes another view: that al- 
though the same spaces are perfectly filled by two dif- 
ferent kinds of matter, so that there is no point in either 
of them where matter is not present, yet the real in either, 
the quality being the same, has its own degree (of resist- 
ance or weight) which, without any diminution of its 
extensive quantity, may grow smaller and smaller in 
infinitum, before it reaches the void and vanishes. Thus 
a certain expansion which fills space, for instance, heat, 
and every other kind of phenomenal reality, may, without 
leaving the smallest part of space empty, diminish by 
degrees in infinitum, and nevertheless fill space with its 
smaller, quite as much as another phenomenon with 
greater degrees. Kant says that he does not mean to say 
that this is really the case with the different kinds of 
matter according to their specific gravity. He only wants 
to show by a fundamental principle of the pure under- 
standing, that the nature of our perception renders such 
an explanation possible, and that it is wrong to look upon 
the real in phenomena as equal in degree, and different 
only in aggregation and its extensive quantity, nay, to 
maintain this on the pretended authority of an a priori 
principle of the understanding. 



106 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

III. Analogies of Experience. Their principle 
is: Experience is possible only through the representa- 
tion of a necessary connection of perceptions. 

The Analogies of Experience demand a more detailed 
treatment than do the preceding Principles of the Pure 
Understanding. The Analogies consider principles 
which are not only of the utmost importance as synthetic 
principles of knowledge, but which also claim to be 
fundamental ontological principles, and which in this 
role have played an important part in all scientific and 
philosophical speculation. Moreover we must remember 
how Hume's treatment of causality set Kant to thinking 
and finally led to the production of the Critique of Pure 
Reason. Furthermore, if we consider the difficulty of 
comprehending the significance of causality, one of the 
most baffling conceptions in philosophy, we shall under- 
stand why the Analogies merit and demand more than 
passing notice. 

The three modes of time are permanence, succession, 
and co-existence. There will therefore be three rules of 
all relations of phenomena in time, by which the existence 
of every phenomenon with regard to the unity of time 
is determined, and these rules are presupposed in all 
experience, indeed, render all experience possible. 

Experience in reference to nature is empirical knowl- 
edge, that is, knowledge which determines an object by 
means of perceptions. Nature is, therefore, a synthesis 
of perceptions, a synthesis which itself is not contained 
in the perception. The synthetical unity of the manifold 
of the perceptions is contained in a consciousness, that 
unity constituting the essential of our knowledge of the 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 107 

objects of the senses, that is, of experience. In subjective 
experience, perceptions come together contingently only, 
so that no necessity of their connection could be discov- 
ered in the perceptions themselves or in their order, 
apprehension being only a composition of the manifold 
of empirical intuition, but containing no representation 
of the real connection of existence in space and time. 
Objective experience, on the contrary, and that referred 
to at the beginning of the paragraph, is a knowledge of 
objects by perceptions, in which therefore the relation 
of the existence of the manifold is to be represented, not 
as it is put together in time, but as it is really in time, 
objectively. Now, as time itself can not be perceived, 
the determination of the existence of objects in time can 
take place only by their connection in time in general, 
that is, through concepts connecting them a priori. As 
these concepts always imply necessity, we are justified 
in saying that experience is possible only through a 
representation of the necessary connection of perceptions. 
What has been said of all synthetical principles, and 
what is said here, is, that these analogies have their 
meaning and validity, not as principles of the trans- 
cendent, but only as principles of the empirical use of 
the understanding. 

A. First Analogy. Principle of the Permanence 
of Substance : In all changes of phenomena the substance 
is permanent, and its quantum is neither increased nor 
diminished in nature. 

All phenomena take place in time. Phenomena can 
be determined in time in two ways, either as successive 



108 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

or as co-existent. In the first case time is considered as 
a series, in the second as a whole. 

Our apprehension of the manifold of phenomena is 
always successive, and therefore always changing. By 
it alone therefore we can never determine whether the 
manifold, as an object of experience, is co-existent or 
successive, unless there is something in it which exists 
always, that is, something constant and permanent, 
while change and succession are nothing but so many 
kinds of time in which the permanent exists. Relations 
of time are therefore possible in the permanent only 
(co-existence and succession being the only relations of 
time) so that the permanent is the substratum of the 
empirical representation of time itself, and in it alone all 
determination of time is possible. Permanence expresses 
time as the constant correlative of all existence of phe- 
nomena, of all change and concomitancy. For change 
does not affect time itself, but only phenomena in time 
(nor is co-existence a mode of time itself, because in it no 
parts can be co-existent, but successive only). Only 
through the permanent does existence in different parts 
of a series of time assume a quantity which we call dura- 
Hon. For in mere succession existence always comes and 
goes, and never assumes the slightest quantity. Without 
something permanent, therefore, no relation of time is 
possible. Time by itself, however, can not be perceived, 
and it is therefore the permanent in phenomena that 
forms the substratum for all determination of time, and 
at the same time the condition of the possibility of all 
synthetical unity of perceptions, that is, of experience; 
while with regard to that permanent all existence and 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 109 

all change in time can only be taken as a mode of exist- 
ence of what is permanent. In all phenomena, therefore, 
the permanent is the object itself, that is, the substance 
(phenomenon), while all that changes or can change be- 
longs only to the mode in which substance or substances 
exist, therefore, to their determinations. This perma- 
nence, however, is nothing but the manner in which we 
represent the existence of things (as phenomenal). 

On this permanence also depends the right under- 
standing of the concept of change. To arise and to perish 
are not changes of that which arises or perishes. Change 
is a mode of existence, which follows another mode of 
existence of the same object. Hence whatever changes 
is permanent, and its condition only changes. As this 
alteration refers only to determinations which may have 
an end or a beginning, we may use an expression that 
seems somewhat paradoxical and say: the permanent 
only (substance) is changed, the changing itself suffers 
no change, but there is only an alteration, certain deter- 
minations ceasing to exist, while others begin. 

Substances, therefore (as phenomena), are the true 
substrata of all determinations of time. Permanence, 
therefore, is a necessary condition under which alone 
phenomena, as things or objects, can be determined in a 
possible experience.* 

Here again we have a clear example of the transcenden- 
tal method. Kant shows that the proposition: amid all 
change of phenomena substance is permanent, and the 
quantity of it is in nature neither increased nor dimin- 

* This same necessity is recognized in physical science in the 
assertion that the amount of energy remains constant. 



IIO INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

ished, can neither come from experience, nor be based on 
logical certainty, but that it is only on the assumption 
of this proposition, that experience is possible. 

B. Second Analogy. Principle op the Succession 
op Time, according to the Law op Causality: All 
changes take place according to the law of connection be- 
tween cause and effect. 

The apprehension of the manifold of phenomena is 
always successive. The representations of the parts 
follow one upon another; whether they also follow one 
upon the other in the object not being thus determined. 
Since phenomena are not things in themselves, and are 
yet the only things that can be given us to know, the 
question is what kind of connection in time belongs to 
the manifold of the phenomena itself, when the rep- 
resentation of it in our apprehension is always successive. 
Thus, for instance, the apprehension of the manifold 
in the phenomenal appearance of a house is successive. 
The question then arises, whether the manifold of the 
house itself be successive, which of course no one would 
admit. Whenever I ask for the transcendental meaning 
of my concepts of an object, I find that a house is not 
a thing in itself, but a phenomenon only, that is, a rep- 
resentation the object-in-itself of which is unknown. 
What then can be the meaning of the question, how the 
manifold in the phenomenon itself (which is not a thing 
in itself) may be connected? Here that which is con- 
tained in our successive apprehension is considered as 
representation, and the given phenomenon, though it is 
nothing but the whole of these representations, as their 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC III 

object, with which my concept, drawn from the represent- 
ations of my apprehension, is to accord. As the accord 
between knowledge and its object is truth, it is easily 
seen, that we can ask here only for the formal conditions 
of empirical truth, and that the phenomenon, in con- 
tradistinction to the representations of our apprehension, 
can only be represented as the object different from them, 
if it is subject to a rule distinguishing it from every other 
apprehension, and necessitating a certain kind of con- 
junction of the manifold. That which in the phenomenon 
contains the condition of this necessary rule of apprehen- 
sion is the object. 

Every apprehension of an event is a perception 
following on another perception. But as this applies to 
all synthesis of apprehension, as was shown before, in 
the phenomenal appearance of a house, that apprehen- 
sion would not thereby be different from any other. But 
I observe at the same time, that if in a phenomenon 
which contains an event I call the antecedent state of 
perception, A, and the subsequent, B, B can only follow 
A in my apprehension, while the perception A can never 
follow B, but can only precede it. I see, for instance, a 
ship gliding down a stream. My perception of its place 
below follows my perception of its place higher up in the 
course of the stream, and it is impossible in the apprehen- 
sion of this phenomenon that the ship should be perceived 
first below and then higher up. We see, therefore, that 
the order in the succession of perceptions in our apprehen- 
sion is here determined, and our apprehension regulated 
by that order. In the former example of a house my 
perceptions could begin in the apprehension at the roof 



112 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

and end in the basement, or begin below and end above; 
they could apprehend the manifold of the empirical 
intuition from right to left or from left to right. There 
was therefore no determined order in the succession of 
these perceptions, determining the point where I had to 
begin in apprehension, in order to connect the manifold 
empirically; while in the apprehension of an event there 
is always a rule, which makes the order of the successive 
perceptions (in the apprehension of this phenomenon) 
necessary. 

We shall have to derive the subjective succession in 
our apprehension from the objective succession of the 
phenomena, because otherwise the former would be 
entirely undetermined, and unable to distinguish one 
phenomenon from another. The former alone proves 
nothing as to the connection of the manifold in the object, 
because it is quite arbitrary. The latter must therefore 
consist in the order of the manifold in a phenomenon, 
according to which the apprehension of what is happening 
follows upon the apprehension of what has happened, in 
conformity with a rule. Thus only may one say not only 
of my apprehension, but of the phenomenon itself, that 
there exists in it a succession, which is the same as to say 
that one can not arrange the apprehension otherwise than 
in that very succession. 

In conformity with this, there must exist in that which 
always precedes an event the condition of a rule, by which 
this event follows at all times, and necessarily; but I can 
not go back from the event and determine by apprehen- 
sion that which precedes. For no phenomenon goes 
back from the succeeding to the preceding point of time, 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 113 

though it is related to some preceding point of time, 
while the progress from a given time to a determined 
following time is necessary. Therefore, as there certainly 
is something that follows, I must necessarily refer it to 
something else which precedes, and upon which it follows 
by rule, that is, by necessity. So that the event, as being 
conditional, affords a safe indication of some kind of con- 
dition, while that condition itself determines the event. 

If we supposed that nothing precedes an event upon 
which such event must follow according to rule, all 
succession of perception would then exist in apprehension 
only, that is, subjectively; but it would not thereby be 
determined objectively, what ought properly to be the 
antecedent and what the subsequent in perception. We 
should thus have a mere play of representations uncon- 
nected with any object, that is, no phenomenon would, 
by our perception, be distinguished in time from any 
other phenomenon, because the succession in apprehen- 
sion would always be uniform and there would be nothing 
in the phenomena to determine the succession, so as to 
render a certain sequence objectively necessary. I could 
not say therefore that two states follow each other in a 
phenomenon, but only that one apprehension follows 
another, which is purely subjective, and does not deter- 
mine any object, and can not be considered therefore as 
knowledge of anything (even of something purely 
phenomenal) . 

If therefore experience teaches us that something 
happens, we always presuppose that something precedes 
on which it follows by rule. Otherwise I could not say 
of the object that it followed, because its following in my 



114 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

apprehension only, without being determined by rule 
in reference to what precedes, would not justify us in 
admitting an objective following. It is therefore always 
with reference to a rule by which phenomena as they 
follow, that is, as they happen, are determined by an 
antecedent state, that I can give an objective character 
to my subjective synthesis (of apprehension) ; nay, it is 
under this supposition only that an experience of any- 
thing that happens becomes possible. 

It is impossible that such rule should be derived by a 
perception and comparison of many events following in 
the same manner on preceding phenomena, for it would 
then be only an empirical generalization. 

It is necessary, therefore, to show by examples that we 
never, even in experience, ascribe the sequence or con- 
sequence (of an event or something happening that did 
not exist before) to the object, and distinguish it from the 
subjective sequence of an apprehension, except when 
there is a rule which forces us to observe a certain order 
of perceptions, and no other; nay, that it is this force 
which from the first renders the representation of a suc- 
cession in the object possible. 

We have representations within us, and can become 
conscious of them; but the representations are rep- 
resentations only, that is, internal determinations of our 
mind in this or that relation of time. What right have 
we then to ascribe to these modifications an objective 
reality beyond their subjective one? Their objective 
character can not consist in the mere relation of rep- 
resentations to each other. If we try to find out what 
new quality or dignity is imparted to our representations 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 115 

by their relation to an object, we find that it consists in 
nothing but the rendering necessary the connection of 
representations in a certain way, and subjecting them 
to a rule; and that on the other hand they receive their 
objective character only because a certain order is nec- 
essary in the time relations of our representations. 

If then it is a necessary law of our sensibility, and 
therefore a formal condition of all perception, that a 
preceding necessarily determines a succeeding time 
(because I can not arrive at the succeeding time except 
through the preceding), it is also an indispensable law of 
the empirical representation of the series of time that the 
phenomena of past time determine every existence in 
succeeding times, nay, that these, as events, can not 
take place except so far as the former determine their 
existence in time, that is, determine it by rule. For it is 
of course in phenomena only that we can know empirically 
this continuity in the coherence of times. 

What is required for all experience and renders it 
possible is the understanding, and the first that is added 
by it is not that it renders the representation of objects 
clear, but that it really renders the representation of any 
object for the first time possible. This takes place by 
the understanding transferring the order of time to the 
phenomena and their existence, and by assigning to 
each of them as to a consequence a certain a priori de- 
termined place in time, with reference to antecedent 
phenomena, without which place, phenomena would not 
be in accord with time, which determines a priori their 
places to all its parts. In other words, what happens 
or follows must follow according to a general rule on 



Il6 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

that which was contained in a previous state. We thus 
get a series of phenomena which, by means of the under- 
standing, produces and makes necessary in the series of 
possible perceptions the same order and continuous 
coherence which exists a priori in the form of internal 
intuition (time), in which all perceptions must have 
their place. 

That something happens is therefore a perception 
which belongs to a possible experience, and this expe- 
rience becomes real when I consider the phenomenon' as 
determined with regard to its place in time, that is to 
say, as an object which can always be found, according 
to a rule, in the connection of perceptions. This rule, 
by which we determine everything according to the 
succession of time, is this : the condition under which an 
event follows at all times (necessarily) is to be found in 
what precedes. All possible experience, therefore, that 
is, all objective knowledge of phenomena with regard 
to their relation in the succession of time, depends on the 
principle of sufficient reason. 

The proof of this principle rests on the following con- 
siderations. All empirical knowledge requires synthesis 
of the manifold by imagination, which is always succes- 
sive. That succession, however, in the imagination is not 
at all determined with regard to the order in which some- 
thing precedes and something follows. If that synthesis, 
however, is a synthesis of apperception (of the manifold 
in a given phenomenon), then the order is determined in 
the object, or, to speak more accurately, there is then in 
it an order of successive synthesis which determines the 
object, and according to which something must nee- 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 117 

essarily precede, and, when it is once there, something 
else must necessarily follow. If, therefore, my percep- 
tion is to contain the knowledge of an event, or something 
that really happens, it must consist of an empirical judg- 
ment, by which the succession is supposed to be deter- 
mined, so that the event presupposes another phenom- 
enon in time on which it follows necessarily and according 
to a rule. If it were different, if the antecedent phenom- 
enon were there, and the event did not follow on it 
necessarily, it would become to me a mere play of my 
subjective imagination, or if I thought it to be objective, 
I should call it a dream. It is therefore the relation of 
phenomena (as possible perceptions) according to which 
the existence of the subsequent (what happens) is deter- 
mined in time by something antecedent necessarily and 
by rule, or, in other words, the relation of cause and effect, 
which forms the condition of the objective validity of 
our empirical judgments with regard to the series of per- 
ceptions, and therefore also the condition of the empirical 
truth of them, and of experience. The principle of the 
causal relation in the succession of phenomena is valid, 
therefore, for all objects of experience, also (under the 
conditions of succession), because that principle is 
itself the ground of the possibility of such experience. 

Here, however, we meet with a difficulty that must 
first be removed. The principle of the causal connection 
of phenomena is restricted in our formula to their suc- 
cession, while in practice we find that it applies also to 
their co-existence, because cause and effect may exist 
at the same time. For example, the warmth of the room 
comes from the fire now present in it. The greater part 



Il8 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

of the active causes in nature are of this sort, and the 
succession of these effects in time is due only to this, 
that a cause can not produce its whole effect in one 
moment. But at the moment at which an effect first 
arises it is always co-existent with the causality of its 
cause, because if that had ceased one moment before, the 
effect would never have happened. Here we must well 
consider that what is thought of is the order, not the 
lapse of time, and that the relation remains, even if no 
time had lapsed. The time between the causality of the 
cause and its immediate effect can be vanishing (they may 
be simultaneous), but the relation of the one to the other 
remains for all that determinable in time. A ball placed 
on a soft cushion produces a depression which is simul- 
taneous with the ball, but the depression does not pro- 
duce the ball. 

This causality leads to the concept of action, that to 
the concept of force, and lastly, to the concept of sub- 
stance. Wherever there is action, therefore activity and 
force, there must be substance, and in this alone, the 
seat of that fertile source of phenomena can be sought. 
Action itself implies the relation of the subject of the 
causality to the effect. As all effect consists in that 
which happens, that is, in the changeable, indicating 
time in succession, the last subject of it is the permanent, 
as the substratum of all that changes, that is, substance. 

Another phase demands attention. Hitherto the con- 
sideration has concerned itself with the law of the succes- 
sion of phenomena upon each other. What must now 
be investigated is the transition from the not-being of a 
state into that state, even though it contained no quality 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 119 

whatever as a phenomenon. This arising, as has been 
shown in the first Analogy, does not concern the sub- 
stance (because the substance never arises), but its state 
only. It is therefore mere change, and not an arising 
out of nothing. When such an arising is looked upon as 
the effect of a foreign cause, it is called creation. This 
can never be admitted as an event among phenomena, 
because its very possibility would destroy the unity of 
experience. If, however, we consider all things, not as 
phenomena, but as things in themselves and objects of 
the understanding only, then, though they are substances, 
they must be considered as dependent in their existence 
on a foreign cause. Our words would then assume quite 
a different meaning, and no longer be applicable to 
phenomena, as possible objects of experience. 

How anything can be changed at all, how it is possible 
that one state in a given time is followed by another at 
another time, of that we have not the slightest concep- 
tion a priori. We want for that a knowledge of real 
powers, which can be given empirically only: for instance, 
a knowledge of motive powers, or what is the same, a 
knowledge of certain successive phenomena (as move- 
ments) which indicate the presence of such forces. What 
can be considered a priori, according to the law of causal- 
ity and the conditions of time, is the form of every change, 
the condition under which alone, as an arising of another 
state, it can take place (its contents, that is, the state, 
which is changed, being what it may), and therefore 
the succession itself of the states (that which has hap- 
pened). Kant adds that he is not speaking of the change 
of certain relations, but of the change of a state. There- 



120 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

fore when a body moves in a uniform way, it does not 
change its state of movement, but it does so when its 
motion increases or decreases. 

This discussion has shown how it is possible to know 
a priori a law of changes, as far as their form is concerned. 
We are only anticipating our own apprehension, the 
formal conditions of which, as it dwells in us before all 
given phenomena, may well be known a priori. In the 
same manner therefore in which time contains the sen- 
suous condition a priori of the possibility of a continuous 
progression of that which exists to that which follows, 
the understanding, by means of the unity of appercep- 
tion, is a condition a priori of the possibility of a contin- 
uous determination of the position of all phenomena 
in that time, and this through a series of causes and 
effects, the former producing inevitably the existence 
of the latter, and thus rendering the empirical knowledge 
of the relations of time valid for all times (universally) 
and therefore objectively valid. 

In connection with the foregoing discussion it seems 
advisable to call attention to some aspects of Kant's 
work which bear directly on the conception of causality. 
A complete unfolding of the implications connected 
with the causal principle would give an explanation of 
the relations existing between all the different parts of 
reality. Such an explanation in all its completeness 
Kant holds to be impossible. But by a very subtle and 
perplexing analysis of experience and its grounds he 
indicates the different problems connected with the 
general principle. As in this discussion he emphasizes 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 121 

now one and then another difficulty to be overcome, 
many different interpretations of his position are made 
possible. 

If one reads Kant's discussion of causality in the light 
of what he says in other places, the bases of different 
interpretations of his doctrine of causality come to light. 
One of Kant's most fundamental contentions is that the 
objects of experience stand in organic relation to con- 
sciousness. Consciousness must know its objects for 
otherwise it would have no conscious experience. It 
seems necessary, therefore, that objects should conform 
to the laws of consciousness. Some hold that from this 
it is necessary to assert that the real is the rational. 
Furthermore since the relation between consciousness 
and its object is inner and organic, they hold that it is 
not correctly conceived by means of the causal relation. 
On the objective side of this organic whole, we find the 
laws of consciousness objectified. The relation found 
here, it is maintained, can not be expressed in terms of 
necessary sequence but must be considered as a logical 
or teleological unity of organic parts. The relation then 
appears to be one of necessary implication, or the rela- 
tion of ground to consequence. In this reduction, time 
as a factor in the causal relation vanishes. 

As was stated at the outset, this point of view is based 
upon a very real and important aspect of Kant's position. 
It may be that this point of view can be elaborated in 
such a manner as to do no violence to either term of 
the subject-object relation. Ordinarily however, this 
point of view takes a form in which objects depend upon 
subject to such an extent that the real force of the 



122 

subject-object relation is lost. When this is the case, the 
view is not only opposed to many of Kant's explicit 
statements, but is also opposed to the position which was 
its starting point. One should not forget that in the 
subject-object relation, the object is just as real as the 
subject; no priority is to be asserted of either. It is a 
mistake, therefore, from this point of view, to take the 
position that consciousness precedes and produces 
objectivity. 

Since it is impossible to reduce either into terms of the 
other, and since both of them and their relation to each 
other seem to depend upon more ultimate conditions, 
the way is open to another aspect of Kant's position 
concerning cause. Consciousness and with it the entire 
phenomenal world seem to Kant to depend upon mate- 
rial and processes arising from the activity of things in 
themselves upon the noumenal conditions of the self. 
Our concern here is not with the ultimate nature either 
of the activity or of the synthetic processes. The im- 
portant point for the consideration here is that it is 
necessary to assume them as conditions which produce 
or ground our experience. These conditions are not to 
be conceived in temporal or spatial terms since space 
and time apply only to the resultant phenomena. In so 
far as the changes taking place in experience are supposed 
to depend upon these assumed but unknown conditions, 
the true nature of causality in itself is unknown. 

Another phase, the temporal aspect, of causality is 
explicitly considered in the Principles where Kant is 
concerned with the a priori elements of physical science. 
Before proceeding to this specific question and its re- 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 1 23 

suits, it is necessary to refer once more to Kant's general 
position concerning the relation between consciousness 
and objects, Consciousness of time, as the most prim- 
itive form of consciousness, involves the necessity of the 
real connection of elements in an object (substance), 
the real connection of happenings in time (causality), 
the real spatial co-existence and mutual determinations 
of objects in a system (reciprocity). These are the objec- 
tive side of that primitive subject-object relationship 
without which there is no consciousness. Hence no 
further demonstration of the a priority of these elements 
is required, and there must be an objective causal con- 
nection between events taking place in time.* 

* Some critics have found a fundamental inconsistency in Kant's 
position when he holds that while the general principle of causality 
is a priori, particular laws of nature can only be learned from ex- 
perience, and so are a posteriori. To us, Kant's position does not 
seem inconsistent, for he has exhaustively shown that certain 
principles are necessary if human beings are to have any experi- 
ence at all. This being the case, it is possible to predict with cer- 
tainty that such principles must always be present in human ex- 
perience. In other words, these principles as necessary elements 
in human experience are known a priori. While we can predict 
with complete certainty what forms our experience will take, we 
can in no wise predict what the content of those forms will be. 
Therefore, Kant holds that the content of the causal principle 
as well as the content of the principle of substance must always 
be given. That is, even though we must assume a general dis- 
position, on the part of the subject, to objectify and to relate events 
causally, we are equally constrained to look to experience to fur- 
nish the material. In other words, what the qualities are that 
particular things are to have, and what the things or events are 
that are to be related causally, or what the particular laws of 
causal relation are, these experience only can determine. 



124 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

Causality always involves change. In explaining an 
event, a preceding event is required. Even supposing 
that the event by which it is to be explained is contem- 
poraneous, as is the case in so many causes and effects 
in nature, that does not after all eliminate the necessity 
of a time order. Even though cause and effect co-exist, 
taken together they are facts that take place in time and 
as such are facts whose place in the time order is deter- 
mined by preceding changes, without which they would 
not be related in the manner in which we observe them 
to be related. It must in no wise be taken from this 
that what happens is thus ultimately explained. What 
is stated here concerns merely the way in which we are 
required to view these happenings. If we take time 
abstractly, the significance of any moment of time is 
determined by the other moments in the time series. 
It is impossible to reach any particular time without 
passing through the intervening times. What is true 
of pure time is true of phenomena in time, therefore 
phenomena stand in necessary temporal relationship 
to one another. 

Causality manifests itself in time sequence and is 
therefore under the necessary determinations of time 
sequence. Kant holds that time sequence is a nec- 
essary condition for a causal relation between phenom- 
ena. We are now in a position to see the connection be- 
tween Kant and Hume. Both insist, so far as the known 
significance of causality is concerned, that it can be 
analyzed into a necessary temporal relation of antecedent 
and consequent phenomena. The real productive forces, 
however, are asserted by both to be unknown and un- 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 1 25 

knowable. They agree again in holding that concerning 
any particular causes and effects, we are entirely de- 
pendent upon experience. Anything may be the cause 
of anything else, for all that we can predict. But there is 
this important difference between them in that Hume 
ordinarily says that the causal principle is derived from 
the succession of separate experiences. In other words, 
that it is a habit arising from experience. But Kant has 
shown that it is essentially bound up with those condi- 
tions without which there would be no human experience 
whatever. Kant's position would be that causation 
can not arise from empirical generalization for that 
arises from experience and that in turn implies for its 
very existence those connective principles which are 
supposed to have been derived from it. In just so far as 
Hume holds that cause is derived through habit from a 
succession of separate experiences, just so far is the 
Kantian position a refutation of Hume. 

C. Third Analogy. Principle of Co-existence, 
According to the Law of Reciprocity or Community: 
All substances, so far as they can be perceived as co-existent 
in space, are always affecting each other reciprocally. 

Things are co-existent when, in empirical intuition, 
the perception of the one can follow upon the perception 
of the other, and vice versa, which, as was shown in the 
second principle, is impossible in the temporal succession 
of phenomena. Thus I may first observe the moon and 
afterwards the earth, or, conversely also, first the earth 
and afterwards the moon, and because the perceptions 
of these objects can follow each other in both ways, I 



126 

say that they are co-existent. Now co-existence is the 
existence of the manifold in the same time. Time itself, 
however, can not be perceived, so that we might learn 
from the fact that things exist in the same time, that their 
perceptions can follow each other reciprocally. The 
synthesis of imagination in apprehension would, there- 
fore, give us each of these perceptions as existing in the 
subject, when the other is absent, and vice versa: it would 
never tell us that the objects are co-existent, that is, 
that if one is there, the other also must be there in the 
same time, and this by necessity, so that the perceptions 
may follow each other reciprocally. Hence we require 
a concept of understanding of the reciprocal sequence 
of determinations of things existing at the same time, 
but outside each other in order to be able to say, that 
the reciprocal sequence of the perceptions is founded in 
-the object, and thus to represent their co-existence as 
objective. The relation of substances, however, of which 
the first has determinations, the ground of which deter- 
minations is contained in the other, is the relation of 
influence, and if, conversely also, the first contains the 
ground of determinations in the latter, the relation is 
that of community or reciprocity. Hence the co-existence 
of substances in space can not be known in experience 
otherwise but under the supposition of reciprocal action: 
and this is therefore the condition also of the possibility 
of things themselves as objects of experience. 

We have here another example of Kant's transcenden- 
tal proof. Starting from a world of interrelated objects, 
he asks how is such a world possible. In answer to this 
question Kant shows that the category of reciprocity is 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 1 27 

necessarily involved. Phenomena can not be determined 
by space since space is not directly perceived, and yet 
they must be determined in relation to each other in 
some manner. This is only possible if we look upon 
sensations as qualities of substances which mutually 
determine each other. Thus only can we apprehend 
different objects as appearing to us as unified into a 
single world. Kant emphasizes this in a note: For the 
unity of the world, the whole in which all phenomena 
are supposed to be combined, is manifestly a mere con- 
sequence of the tacitly assumed principle of the com- 
munity of all substances which co-exist; for, if they were 
isolated, they would not constitute parts of one whole; 
and if their connection (the reciprocity of the manifold) 
were not necessary as the presupposition of the co- 
existence, we could never argue from the latter, which 
is a merely ideal relation, to the former, which is a real 
relation of them. We have, however, shown that com- 
munity is the ground of the possibility of any empirical 
knowledge of co-existence, and, therefore, we can quite 
legitimately conclude from the latter to the former as 
its necessary precondition. 

IV. Postulates of Empirical Thought in General 

1. What agrees with the formal conditions of expe- 
rience (in intuition and in concepts) is possible. 

2. What is connected with the material conditions of 
experience (sensation) is real. 

3. That which, in its connection with the real, is de- 
termined by universal conditions of experience, is (ex- 
ists as) necessary. 



128 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

The categories of modality have this peculiar char- 
acter that, as determining an object, they do not en- 
large in the least the concept to which they are attached 
as predicates, but express only a relation to our faculty 
of knowledge. Even when the concept of a thing is 
quite complete, I can still ask with reference to that 
object, whether it is possible only, or real also, and, if the 
latter, whether it is necessary? No new determinations 
of the object are thereby conceived, but it is only asked 
in what relation it (with all its determinations) stands 
to the understanding and its empirical employment, to 
the empirical faculty of judgment, and to reason, in its 
application to experience? 

The principles of modality are therefore nothing but 
explanations of the concepts of possibility, reality, and 
necessity, in their empirical employment, confining all 
categories to an empirical employment only, and pro- 
hibiting their transcendent use. For if these categories 
are not to have a purely logical character, expressing the 
forms of thought analytically, but are to refer to things, 
their possibility, reality, or necessity, they must have 
reference to possible experience and its synthetical unity, 
in which alone objects of knowledge can be given. 

The principles of modality are not objectively syn- 
thetical, because the predicates of possibility, reality, 
and necessity do not in the least increase the concept 
of which they are predicated, by adding anything to its 
representation. But as nevertheless they are synthetical, 
they are so subjectively only, that is, they add to the 
concept of a (real) thing, without predicating anything 
new, the peculiar faculty of knowledge from which it 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 1 29 

springs and on which it depends, so that, if in the under- 
standing the concept is only connected with the formal 
conditions of experience, its object is called possible; if 
it is connected with perception (sensation as the material 
of the senses), and through it determined by the under- 
standing, its object is called real; while, if it is determined 
through the connection of perceptions, according to 
concepts, its object is called necessary. The principles 
of modality therefore predicate nothing of a concept 
except the act of the faculty of knowledge by which it 
is produced. 

It is possible to say that the Principles sum up, in a 
general way, the preceding development of the Critique. 
The progress has been from the factual (the given per- 
ceptions) to a scientifically organized body of knowledge 
in which reality appears in all its relations as neces- 
sarily determined. The Postulates may be interpreted as 
indicating that Kant was now seeking to break down 
the over-accentuated separation between the different 
faculties of knowledge. 

In general, these Principles show the necessary stages 
through which individual and race must pass to come 
to scientific knowledge, and finally to complete self- 
consciousness. We do not mean that each Principle 
represents a distinct and separate period though one or 
another of them would fairly well characterize the grade 
of knowledge at a particular stage. We mean to assert 
that these are logical moments in thought representing 
a certain relation between subject and objectivity, or 
nature. All of these moments are present, to some ex- 



I30 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

tent, either implicitly or explicitly in the thinking at 
all stages of knowledge. 

If one takes the point of view that reality exists as an 
independent world over against the subject, a reality 
which he can come to know with varying degrees of 
exactness, then one must say of these Postulates that 
they are not ontological, but that they simply indicate a 
progressive development which passes from a bare knowl- 
edge of reality to a knowledge of the laws of the relations 
of things. If, on the contrary, one takes the position 
that reality is unknowable (and this would seem to be 
Kant's dominating point of view), then from this point 
of view the Postulates indicate the relation between con- 
sciousness and a phenomenal world. Such a phenomenal 
world, of course, need not be subjective, that is, it may 
be the world which science attempts to know, the world of 
possible experience. The Postulates, from this stand- 
point, show a progressive deepening of the subject's 
understanding of laws which he may have unconsciously 
furnished to nature, a process culminating in explicit 
self-consciousness. To some (Hegelians and Neo- 
Hegelians) it seems a short and necessary step to a denial 
of the existence of a realm of things in themselves. This 
is equivalent to saying that the world of possible expe- 
rience (the phenomenal world of Kant) is the real world. 
This involves the position that the real world is rational. 
At this point the entire ontological problem changes, 
and hence the significance of the Postulates also changes. 

In the course of his discussion of the second Postulate, 
that of reality, Kant says that wherever perception and 
its train can reach, according to our empirical laws, 






TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 131 

there our knowledge also of the existence of things can 
reach. But if we do not begin with experience, or do not 
proceed according to the laws of the empirical connection 
of phenomena, we are only making a vain display, as if 
we could guess and discover the existence of anything. 
Here he then places, in the second edition, his Refutation 
of Idealism. On account of the way in which it throws 
light on Kant's phenomenalism, it is thought best to 
give this refutation in its entirety. 

Refutation op Idealism 

Idealism (I mean material idealism) is the theory 
which declares the existence of objects in space, without 
us, as either doubtful only and not demonstrable, or as 
false and impossible. The former is the problematical 
idealism of Descartes, who declares one empirical asser- 
tion only to be undoubted, namely, that of / am; the 
latter is the dogmatical idealism of Berkeley, who declares 
space and all things to which it belongs as an inseparable 
condition, as something impossible in itself, and, there- 
fore, the things in space as mere imaginations. Dog- 
matic idealism is inevitable, if we look upon space as a 
property belonging to things in themselves, for in that 
case space and all of which it is a condition, would be a 
non-entity. The ground on which that idealism rests 
has been removed by us in the transcendental ^Esthetic. 
Problematical idealism, which asserts nothing, but only 
pleads our inability of proving any existence except our 
own by means of immediate experience, is reasonable 
and in accordance with a sound philosophical mode of 
thought, which allows of no decisive judgment, before a 



132 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

sufficient proof has been found. The required proof 
will have to demonstrate that we may have not only an 
imagination, but also an experience of external things, 
and this it seems can hardly be effected in any other way 
except by proving that even our internal experience, 
which Descartes considers as undoubted, is possible 
only under the supposition of external experience. 

Theorem 

The simple, but empirically determined Consciousness of 
my own existence, proves the Existence of objects in space 
outside myself. 

Proof 

I am conscious of my own existence as determined in 
time, and all determination in time presupposes some- 
thing permanent in the perception. That permanent, 
however, can not be an intuition within me, because all 
the causes which determine my existence, so far as they 
can be found within me, are representations, and as such 
require something permanent, different from them, in 
reference to which their change, and therefore my exist- 
ence in time in which they change, may be determined. 
The perception of this permanent, therefore, is possible 
only through a thing outside me, and not through the 
mere representation of a thing outside me, and the deter- 
mination of my existence in time is, consequently, pos- 
sible only by the existence of real things, which I per- 
ceive outside me. Now, as the consciousness in time is 
necessarily connected with the consciousness of the 
possibility of that determination of time, it is also nee- 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 133 

essarily connected with the existence of things outside 
me, as the condition of the determination of time. In 
other words, the consciousness of my own existence is, 
at the same time, an immediate consciousness of the 
existence of other things. 

Note 1. — It will have been perceived that in the fore- 
going proof the trick played by idealism has been turned 
against it, and with greater justice. Idealism assumed 
that the only immediate experience is the internal, and 
that from it we can no more than infer external things, 
though in an untrustworthy manner only, as always 
happens if from given effects we infer definite causes: it 
being quite possible that the cause of the representations, 
which are ascribed by us, it may be wrongly, to external 
things, may lie within ourselves. We, however, have 
proved that external experience is really immediate,* 
and that only by means of it, though not the conscious- 
ness of my own existence, yet its determination in time, 
that is, internal experience, becomes possible. No doubt 

*Kant's Footnote. The immediate consciousness of the existence 
of external things is not simply assumed in the preceding theorem, 
but proved, whether we can understand the possibility of this con- 
sciousness or not. The question with regard to that possibility 
would come to this, whether we have an internal sense only, and 
no external sense, but merely an external imagination. It is clear, 
however, that, even in order to imagine only something as external, 
that is, to represent it to the senses in intuition, we must have an 
external sense, and thus distinguish immediately the mere recep- 
tivity of an external intuition from that spontaneity which char- 
acterizes every act of imagination. For merely to imagine an 
external sense would really be to destroy the faculty of in- 
tuition, which is to be determined by the faculty of imagina- 
tion. 



134 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the representation of I am, which expresses the con- 
sciousness that can accompany all thought, is that which 
immediately includes the existence of a subject; but it 
does not yet include a knowledge of it, and therefore no 
empirical knowledge, that is, experience. For that we 
require, besides the thought of something existing, in- 
tuition also, and in this case internal intuition in respect 
to which, that is, to time, the subject must be deter- 
mined. For that purpose external objects are absolutely 
necessary, so that internal experience itself is possible, 
mediately only, and through external experience. 

Note 2. — This view is fully confirmed by the empirical 
use of our faculty of knowledge, as applied to the deter- 
mination of time. Not only are we unable to perceive 
any determination of time, except through a change in 
external relations (motion) with reference to what is 
permanent in space (for instance, the movement of the 
sun with respect to terrestrial objects), but we really 
have nothing permanent to which we could refer the 
concept of a substance, as an intuition, except matter 
only: and even its permanence is not derived from ex- 
ternal experience, but presupposed a priori as a necessary 
condition of all determination of time, and therefore also 
of the determination of the internal sense with respect 
to our own existence through the existence of external 
things. The consciousness of myself, in the representa- 
tion of the ego, is not an intuition, but a merely intellectual 
representation of the spontaneity of a thinking subject. 
Hence that ego has not the slightest predicate derived 
from intuition, which predicate, as permanent, might 
serve as the correlate of the determination of time in the 






TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 135 

internal sense: such as is, for instance, impermeability 
in matter, as an empirical intuition. 

Note 3. — Because the existence of external objects is 
required for the possibility of a definite consciousness 
of ourselves, it does not follow that every intuitional 
representation of external things involves, at the same 
time, their existence; for such a representation may 
well be the mere effect of the faculty of imagination (in 
dreams as well as in madness) ; but it can be such an effect 
only through the reproduction of former external per- 
ceptions, which, as we have shown, is impossible without 
the reality of external objects. What we wanted to prove 
here was only that internal experience in general is 
possible only through external experience in general. 
Whether this or that supposed experience be purely 
imaginary, must be settled according to its own particu- 
lar determinations, and through a comparison with the 
criteria of all real experience.* 

Before leaving the consideration of the Principles, it 
may be helpful to indicate the general aspects of the 
problem with which Kant has been concerned. The 
problem of the schematism was to show how the cat- 
egories apply to the objects with which physical science 
is concerned, and the Principles are the actual carrying 
out of the schematism, in so far as they state the a priori 

* The insistence, in the refutation, upon the organic nature of 
the subject-object relationship in knowledge, may appear to jus- 
tify that interpretation of Kant made by the objective idealists. 
But it must be remembered that Kant is here dealing with a world 
of knowledge — the phenomenal world, — which is of course deter- 
mined as to its form by the unity of consciousness. 



136 INTRODUCTION TO KANT's CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

synthetic judgments which the categories enable us to 
make concerning nature, that is, the subject-matter of 
physical science. 

From this may be seen that Kant's position is not 
arrived at through a combination of rationalism and 
empiricism, but that his philosophy is a real empiri- 
cism since the principles of knowledge as well as the 
content are reached through an analysis of concrete 
experience. 

This subject-matter of physical science appears in 
consciousness through the process of perception, and 
Kant has distinguished between the external sense, the 
form of which is space, and the internal sense, the form 
of which is time. So in his treatment of the four Prin- 
ciples he calls the first two mathematical, and the last 
two dynamical. 

In the Axioms, he points out how the objects of exter- 
nal sense appear to us by adding part to part, that is, 
as aggregates, and so are extensive magnitudes. In this 
way the pure mathematics based on pure perception 
becomes valid for the objects which fill space, and so 
for applied mathematics. 

In the Anticipations we have a situation which, at 
first glance, seems to be subjective rather than objective, 
for he starts from the awareness of degrees of intensity 
in our sensations. But upon reflection, degrees of in- 
tensity involve quantitative considerations, and so the 
Anticipations after all belong to the mathematical 
Principles. The extensive magnitude of two objects 
may be the same, and yet the fact that they have dif- 
ferent weights enables him to infer that there is degree 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 137 

in the intensity of space filling objects. This leads him 
to the dynamical theory of matter. 

So far he has been concerned with the external rela- 
tionships involved in extensive or intensive magnitudes. 
Now another side of nature engages his attention, 
namely, that nature which, while it is constantly in a 
state of change, is after all a systematized whole, and 
the changes within which whole, must be taken as inner 
determinations of each other. Here he has the problem 
of the dynamical Principles. 

The first of the Analogies is substance. Substance is 
necessitated as a permanent substratum without which 
change is unintelligible. Creation, that is, change from 
nothing into something is phenomenally impossible. 
The only change which is phenomenally possible is 
change of state or alteration. This makes clear why the 
principle of conservation of energy is such a basic prin- 
ciple in physical science. 

The second of the Analogies is causation. In the 
preceding Analogy there was a recognition that change 
is always relative to a permanent. Here the situation 
to be considered arises out of the realization that every 
state in a series is necessarily connected with another 
state, and that in a time order. In a series of sensations, 
their order may be entirely accidental and arbitrary; in a 
series of phenomena on the contrary, the order is irrevers- 
ible and necessary. For only through this irreversibility 
and necessity of the order, do we call the series objective, 
and with this comes the consequence that in order to have 
a phenomenal world of objects, we must look upon each 
event as the necessary result of a preceding cause. 



138 

In the third of the Analogies, reciprocity, we have a 
further deepening of the insight. The mathematical 
Principles in treating of quantities, involved only ex- 
ternal relationships; in substance an internal relationship 
is expressed; in causation the internal feature is made 
more explicit; whereas in reciprocity or interaction we 
reach a culmination of this process so far as mechanical 
relationship is concerned, and come to a situation in 
which nature is considered as a whole, and its unity is 
intelligible through the mutual, that is, reciprocal inner 
relation of the parts of the whole. Without the principle 
of reciprocity, that is, an inner, mutual determination 
of the organically related parts of the whole, nature as a 
unity would be impossible. 

The Postulates compose the fourth of the Principles. 
Hitherto, even though the categories have been used, 
nature was taken as something external to the knowing 
subject because the subject has been unconscious of the 
part that he has taken in determining the world of 
phenomenal reality. Now the consideration has to do 
with the relation of the knowing subject to nature, 
and the Postulates express an increasingly internal 
character of this relation due to the ever increasing self- 
consciousness in the employment of the categories. 
The knowing subject is now seen to be a vitally deter- 
mining factor in the character of the world of phenomena. 
That which is consistent with the forms of experience 
is possible; that which is connected with the material 
conditions of experience is real; and that which, in its 
connection with the real, is determined by the universal 
conditions of experience, is necessary. 



transcendental analytic i39 

Transition to the Transcendental Dialectic 

We have now not only traversed the whole domain 
of the pure understanding, and carefully examined each 
part of it, but we have also measured its extent, and 
assigned to everything in it its proper place. This 
domain, however, is an island and enclosed by nature 
itself within limits that can never be changed. It is the 
country of truth, but surrounded by a wide and stormy 
ocean, the true home of illusion, where many a fog bank, 
and ice that soon melts away tempt us to believe in 
new lands, while constantly deceiving the adventurous 
mariner with vain hopes, and involving him in adven- 
tures which he can never leave, and yet can never bring 
to an end. Before we venture ourselves on this sea, in 
order to explore it on every side, and to find out whether 
anything is to be hoped for there, it will be useful to 
glance once more at the map of that country which we 
are about to leave, and to ask ourselves, first, whether 
we ought not be content with what it contains, nay, 
whether we must not be content with it, supposing that 
there is no solid ground anywhere else on which we could 
settle; secondly, by what title we possess even that 
domain, and may consider ourselves safe against all 
hostile claims. 

We have found thus far in the Analytic that the cat- 
egories require, besides the pure concepts of the under- 
standing, certain determinations of their application to 
sensibility in general (schemata). Without them, they 
would not be concepts by which an object can be known 
and distinguished from other objects, but only so many 



140 INTRODUCTION TO KANt's CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

ways of thinking an object for possible intuitions, and 
giving to it, according to one of the functions of the 
understanding, its meaning. Therefore the pure con- 
cepts of the understanding admit of empirical use only, 
and can be referred merely, as general conditions of a 
possible experience, to objects of the senses, never to 
things in themselves. 

Appearances so far as they are thought as objects 
under the unity of the categories are called phenomena. 
But if I admit things which are objects of the under- 
standing only, and nevertheless can be given as objects 
of a non-sensuous intuition, such things would be called 
noumena. 

If all thought (by means of the categories) is taken 
away from empirical knowledge, no knowledge of any 
object remains, because nothing can be thought by mere 
intuition, and the mere fact that there is within me an 
affection of my sensibility, establishes in no way any rela- 
tion of such a representation to any object. If, on the 
contrary, all intuition is taken away, there always remains 
the form of thought, that is, the mode of determining 
an object for the manifold of a possible intuition. In 
this sense the categories may be said to extend further 
than sensuous intuition, because they can think objects 
in general without any regard to the special mode of 
sensibility in which they may be given; but they do not 
thus prove a larger sphere of objects, because we can not 
admit that such objects can be given, without admitting 
the possibility of some intuition not sensuous, for which 
we have no right whatever. 



TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC 

Part II 

TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 

At the beginning of the Transcendental Logic, general 
logic was said to involve two parts: transcendental 
analytic and transcendental dialectic. It was there said 
(p. 45) that in the dialectic, the understanding runs the 
risk of making, through mere sophisms, a material use 
of the purely formal principles of the pure understanding, 
and thus of judging indiscriminately of objects which are 
not given to us, nay, perhaps can never be given. In 
transcendental logic, the transcendental dialectic must 
therefore form a critique of that dialectical semblance. 

Logical illusion, which consists in a mere imitation of 
the forms of reason, arises entirely from want of attention 
to logical rules. It disappears at once, when our atten- 
tion is roused. Transcendental illusion, on the contrary, 
does not disappear, although it has been exposed, and 
its worthlessness rendered clear by means of transcenden- 
tal criticism, as, for instance, the illusion inherent in the 
proposition that the world must have a beginning in time. 
The cause of this is that there exist in our reason (con- 
sidered subjectively as a faculty of human knowledge) 
principles and maxims of its use, which have the appear- 
ance of objective principles, and lead us to mistake the 
subjective necessity of a certain connection of our con- 

141 



142 INTRODUCTION TO KANT's CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

cepts in favor of the understanding for an objective 
necessity in the determination of things in themselves. 
This illusion is as impossible to avoid as it is to prevent 
the sea from appearing to us higher at a distance than on 
the shore, because we see it by higher rays of light; or to 
prevent the moon from appearing, even to an astronomer, 
larger at its rising, although he is not deceived by that 
illusion. 

Transcendental dialectic must, therefore, be content 
to lay bare the illusion of transcendental judgments and 
guard against its deceptions — but it will never succeed 
in removing the transcendental illusion (like the logical), 
and putting an end to it altogether. For we have here 
to deal with a natural and inevitable illusion, which 
itself rests upon subjective principles, representing 
them to us as objective, while logical dialectic, in re- 
moving sophisms has to deal merely with the mistake 
in applying the principles, or with an artificial illusion 
produced by an imitation of them. There exists, there- 
fore, a natural and inevitable dialectic of pure reason, 
not one in which a mere bungler might get entangled 
from want of knowledge, or which a sophist might 
artificially devise to confuse rational people, but one 
that is inherent in, and inseparable from human reason, 
and which, even after its illusion has been exposed, will 
never cease to fascinate our reason, and to precipitate 
it into momentary errors, such as require to be removed 
again and again. 

Reason, in the broad sense, includes all the faculties of 
knowledge. If the understanding is a faculty for pro- 
ducing unity among phenomena, according to rules, 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 143 

reason, in the narrow sense, is the faculty for producing 
unity among the rules of the understanding, according 
to principles. Reason, in the narrow sense, never looks 
directly to experience, or to any object, but to the under- 
standing, in order to impart a priori through concepts 
to its manifold kinds of knowledge a unity that may 
be called the unity of reason, and is very different from 
the unity which can be produced by the understand- 
ing. 

The merely formal and logical procedure of reason in 
syllogisms gives us sufficient hints as to the ground on 
which the transcendental principle of synthetical knowl- 
edge, by means of pure reason, is likely to rest. 

Reason in its logical employment, looks for the general 
condition of its judgment (the conclusion), and the 
syllogism produced by reason is itself nothing but a 
judgment reached through subsumption of its condition 
under a general rule (the major). But as this rule is 
again liable to the same experiment, reason having to 
seek, as long as possible, the condition of a condition (by 
means of a pro-syllogism), it is easy to see that it is the 
peculiar function of reason (in its logical use) to find for 
every conditioned knowledge of the understanding the 
unconditioned, whereby the unity of that knowledge may 
be completed. The transcendental concept of reason is, 
therefore, nothing but the concept of the totality of the 
conditions of anything given as conditioned. As there- 
fore the unconditioned alone renders a totality of condi- 
tions possible, and as conversely the totality of conditions 
must always be unconditioned, it follows that a pure 
concept of reason in general may be explained as a con- 



144 INTRODUCTION TO KANTS CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

cept of the unconditioned, so far as it contains a basis 
for the synthesis of the conditioned. 

As many kinds of relations as there are, which the un- 
derstanding represents to itself by means of the categories, 
so many pure concepts of the reason we shall find, that is, 
first, the unconditioned of the categorical synthesis in a 
subject; secondly, the unconditioned of the hypothetical 
synthesis of the members of a series; thirdly, the uncondi- 
tioned of the disjunctive synthesis of the parts of a system. 

These concepts of the reason Kant calls transcenden- 
tal ideas. They are concepts of pure reason, so far as 
they regard all empirical knowledge as determined by 
an absolute totality of conditions. They are not mere 
fancies, but supplied to us by the very nature of reason, 
and referring by necessity to the whole use of the under- 
standing. They are, lastly, transcendent, as over- 
stepping the limits of all experience which can never 
supply an object adequate to the transcendental idea. 
Although we must say that all transcendental concepts 
of reason are ideas only, they are not therefore to be 
considered as superfluous and useless. For although we 
can not by them determine any object, they may never- 
theless, even unobserved, supply the understanding with 
a canon or rule of its extended and consistent use, by 
which, though no object can be better known than it 
is according to its concepts, yet the understanding may 
be better guided onwards in its knowledge, not to men- 
tion that they may possibly render practicable a transi- 
tion from physical to practical concepts, and thus im- 
part to moral ideas a certain strength and connection 
with the speculative knowledge of reason. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 145 

We see that the relation of the representations of 
which we can form a concept or an idea can only be 
three-fold: first, the relation to a subject; secondly, the 
relation to the manifold of the phenomenal object; 
thirdly, the relation to all things in general. All pure 
concepts in general aim at a synthetical unity of rep- 
resentations, while concepts of pure reason (transcenden- 
tal ideas) aim at an unconditioned synthetical unity of 
all conditions. All transcendental ideas, therefore, can 
be arranged in three classes: The first containing the 
absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject; 
the second the absolute unity of the series of conditions of 
phenomena; the third the absolute unity of the condition 
of all objects of thought in general. 

The thinking subject is the object-matter of psychology, 
the system of all phenomena (the world) the object- 
matter of cosmology, and the being which contains the 
highest condition of the possibility of all that can be 
thought (the being of all beings), the object-matter of 
theology. Thus it is pure reason which supplies the idea 
of a transcendental science of the soul, of a transcendental 
science of the world, and, lastly, of a transcendental 
science of God. Even the mere plan of any one of these 
three sciences does not come from the understanding, 
even if connected with the highest logical use of reason, 
that is, with all possible conclusions, leading from one of 
its objects (phenomenon) to all others, and on to the 
most remote parts of any possible empirical synthesis, — 
but is altogether a pure and genuine product or rather 
problem of pure reason. 

What kinds of pure concepts of reason are compre- 



146 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

hended under these three titles of all transcendental 
ideas will be fully explained later. They follow the 
thread of the categories, for pure reason never refers 
directly to objects, but to the concepts of objects framed 
by the understanding. Nor can it be rendered clear, 
except hereafter in a detailed explanation, how first, 
reason simply by the synthetical use of the same function 
which it employs for categorical syllogisms is necessarily 
led on to the concept of the absolute unity of the thinking 
subject; secondly, how the logical procedure in hypothet- 
ical syllogisms leads to the idea of something absolutely 
unconditioned, in a series of given conditions, and how, 
thirdly, the mere form of the disjunctive syllogism pro- 
duces necessarily the highest concept of reason, that of a 
being of all beings; a thought which, at first sight, seems 
extremely paradoxical. 

No objective deduction, like that given of the cat- 
egories, is possible with regard to these transcendental 
ideas; they are ideas only, and for that very reason they 
have no relation to any object corresponding to them in 
experience. What has been given in the present discus- 
sion is the only thing that could be given, a subjective 
deduction. 

We can easily perceive that pure reason has no other 
aim but the absolute totality of synthesis on the side of 
conditions (whether of inherence, dependence, or con- 
currence), and that it has nothing to do with the absolute 
completeness on the part of the conditioned. It is the for- 
mer only which is required for presupposing the whole 
series of conditions, and thus presenting it a priori to 
the understanding. If once we have a given condition, 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 147 

complete and unconditioned itself, no concept of reason 
is required to continue the series, because the understand- 
ing takes by itself every step downward from the condi- 
tion to the conditioned. The transcendental ideas there- 
fore serve only for ascending in the series of conditions 
till they reach the unconditioned, that is, the principles. 
With regard to descending to the conditioned, there is no 
doubt a widely extended logical use which our reason 
may make of the rules of the understanding, but no 
transcendental one; and if we form an idea of the absolute 
totality of such a synthesis, as, for instance, of the whole 
series of all future changes in the world, this is only a 
thought that may be thought if we like, but is not pre- 
supposed as necessary by reason. For the possibility of 
the conditioned, the totality of its conditions only but 
not of its consequences, is presupposed. Such a concept 
therefore is not one of the transcendental ideas, with 
which alone we have to deal. 

Finally, we can perceive, that there is among the 
transcendental ideas themselves a certain connection and 
unity by which pure reason brings all its knowledge into 
one system. There is in the progression from our knowl- 
edge of ourselves (the soul) to a knowledge of the world, 
and through it to a knowledge of the supreme being, 
something so natural that it looks like the logical progres- 
sion of reason from premises to a conclusion. Whether 
there exists here a real though hidden relationship, such 
as we saw before between the logical and transcendental 
use of reason, is also one of the questions the answer to 
which can only be given in the progress of these investiga- 
tions. For the present we have achieved what we wish 



148 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

to achieve, by removing the transcendental concepts of 
reason, which in the systems of other philosophers are 
generally mixed up with other concepts, without being 
distinguished even from the concepts of the understand- 
ing, out of so equivocal a position; by being able to deter- 
mine their origin and thereby at the same time their 
number, which can never be exceeded, and by thus 
bringing them into a systematic connection, marking 
out and enclosing thereby a separate field for pure reason. 

In view of what has been said before, one may say 
that the object of a purely transcendental idea is some- 
thing of which we have no concept, although the idea is 
produced with necessity according to the original laws 
of reason. Nor is it possible indeed to form an object 
that should be adequate to the demands of reason, a 
concept of the understanding, that is, a concept which 
could be shown in any possible experience, and rendered 
intuitive. It would be better, however, and less liable 
to misunderstandings, to say that we can have no knowl- 
edge of an object corresponding to an idea, but a prob- 
lematic concept only. 

The transcendental (subjective) reality, at least of 
pure concepts of reason, depends on our being led to such 
ideas by a necessary syllogism of reason. There will be 
syllogisms, therefore, which have no empirical premises, 
and by means of which we conclude from something 
which we know to something else of which we have no 
concept, and to which, constrained by an inevitable 
illusion, we nevertheless attribute objective reality. As 
regards their result, such syllogisms are rather to be 
called sophistical than rational, although, as regards 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC I49 

their origin, they may claim the latter name, because 
they are not purely fictitious or accidental, but products 
of the very nature of reason. They are sophistications, 
not of men, but of pure reason itself, from which even 
the wisest of men can not escape. All he can do is, with 
great effort, to guard against error, though never able 
to rid himself completely of an illusion which constantly 
torments and mocks him. 

Of these dialectical syllogisms of reason there are, 
therefore, three classes only, that is, as many as the ideas 
to which their conclusions lead. In the syllogism of the 
first class, I conclude from the transcendental concept 
of the subject, which contains nothing manifold, the 
absolute unity of the subject itself, of which, however, I 
have no concept in this regard. This dialectical syllogism 
I shall call the transcendental paralogism. 

The second class of the so-called sophistical syllogisms 
aims at the transcendental concept of an absolute totality 
in the series of conditions to any given phenomenon; 
and I conclude from the fact that my concept of the 
unconditioned synthetical unity of the series is always 
self-contradictory, on the one side, to the correctness 
of the opposite unity, of which nevertheless I have 
no concept either. The state of reason in this class of 
dialectical syllogisms, I shall call the antinomy of pure 
reason. 

Lastly, according to the third class of sophistical 
syllogisms, I conclude from the totality of conditions, 
under which objects in general, so far as they can be 
given to me, must be thought, the absolute synthetical 
unity of all conditions of the possibility of things in 



i5o 

general; that is to say I conclude from things which I do 
not know according to their mere transcendental concept, 
a being of all beings, which I can know still less through 
a transcendental concept, and of the unconditioned neces- 
sity of which I can form no concept whatever. This 
dialectical syllogism of reason I shall call the ideal of 
pure reason. 

The Paralogisms of Pure Reason 

In the list of the transcendental concepts considered 
in the Analytic, there was one concept involved in all 
of them, which was the vehicle of all of them, and like- 
wise transcendental. This is the concept, or if you will, 
the judgment / think. I, as thinking, am an object of 
the internal sense, and am called soul. The I, as a think- 
ing being, is the object of psychology, which may be 
called the rational science of the soul, supposing that we 
want to know nothing about the soul except what, in- 
dependent of all experience, can be deduced from the 
concept of I, so far as it is present in every act of 
thought. 

We shall therefore follow the thread of the categories, 
with this difference, however, that as here the first thing 
which is given is a thing, the I, a thinking being, we must 
begin with the category of substance, by which a thing 
in itself is represented, and then proceed backwards, 
though without changing the respective order of the 
categories, as given before in our table. The topic of the 
rational science of the soul, from which has to be derived 
whatever else that science may contain, is therefore the 
following. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 151 

I 

The Soul is substance. 

II III 

As regards its quality, simple. As regards the dif- 
ferent times in which it 
exists, numerically iden- 
tical, that is unity (not 
plurality). 

IV 

It is in relation to possible objects in space. 

All concepts of pure psychology arise from these 
elements, simply by way of combination, and without 
the admixture of any other principle. The soul, taken 
as substance, taken simply as the object of the internal 
sense, gives us the concept of immateriality; and as simple 
substance, that of incorruptibility; its identity, as that 
of an intellectual substance, gives us personality; and 
all these three together, spirituality; its relation to objects 
in space gives us the concept of intercourse with bodies; 
the pure psychology thus representing the thinking sub- 
stance as the principle of life in matter, that is, as soul, 
and as the ground of animality; which again, as restricted 
by spirituality, gives us the concept of immortality. 

To these concepts refer four paralogisms of a tran- 
scendental psychology, which is falsely supposed to be 
a science of pure reason, concerning the nature of our 
thinking being. We can, however, use as the foundation 
of such a science nothing but the single, and in itself 



152 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

perfectly empty, representation of the I, of which we 
can not even say that it is a concept, but merely a con- 
sciousness that accompanies all concepts. By this I, 
which thinks, nothing is represented beyond a tran- 
scendental subject of thoughts =x, which is known only 
through the thoughts that are its predicates, and of 
which, apart from them, we can never have the slightest 
concept, so that we are really turning round it in a per- 
petual circle, having already to use its representation, 
before we can form any judgment about it. And this 
inconvenience is really inevitable, because consciousness 
in itself is not so much a representation, distinguishing 
a particular object, but really a form of representation in 
general, in so far as it is to be called knowledge, of which 
alone I can say that I think something by it. 

It must seem strange, however, from the very begin- 
ning, that the condition under which I think, and which 
therefore is a property of my own subject only, should be 
valid at the same time for everything which thinks, and 
that, depending on a proposition which seems to be 
empirical, we should venture to found the apodictical 
and general judgment, namely, that everything which 
thinks is such as the voice of my own consciousness 
declares it to be within me. The reason of it is, that we 
are constrained to attribute a priori to things all the 
qualities which form the conditions, under which alone we 
are able to think them. Now it is impossible for me to 
form the least representation of a thinking being by 
any external experience, but I can do it through self- 
consciousness only. Such objects therefore are nothing 
but a transference of my own consciousness to other 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 53 

things, which thus, and thus only, can be represented as 
thinking beings. The proposition I think is used in this 
case, however, as problematical only; not so far as it may 
contain the perception of an existence (the Cartesian, 
cogito, ergo sum), but with regard to its mere possibility, 
in order to see what properties may be deduced from 
such a simple proposition with regard to its subject, 
whether such subject exists or not. 

If our knowledge of thinking beings in general, so far 
as it is derived from pure reason, were founded on more 
than the cogito, and if we made use, at the same time, of 
observations on the play of our thoughts and the natural 
laws of the thinking self, derived from them, we should 
have before us an empirical psychology, which would 
form a kind of physiology of the internal sense, and per- 
haps explain its manifestations, but would never help 
us to understand such properties as do not fall under any 
possible experience (as, for instance, simplicity), or to 
teach apodictically anything touching the nature of 
thinking beings in general. It would not therefore be a 
rational psychology. 

As the proposition / think (taken problematically) 
contains the form of every possible judgment of the 
understanding, and accompanies all categories as their 
vehicle, it must be clear that the conclusions to be drawn 
from it can only contain a transcendental use of the 
understanding which declines all admixture of experience, 
and of the achievements of which, after what has been 
said before, we cannot form any very favorable anticipa- 
tions. We shall therefore follow it, with a critical eye, 
through all the predicaments of pure psychology. 



154 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

I do not know any object by merely thinking, but only 
by determining a given intuition with respect to that 
unity of consciousness in which all thought consists; 
therefore, I do not know myself by being conscious of 
myself, as thinking, but only if I am conscious of the 
intuition of myself as determined with respect to the 
function of thought. All modes of self-consciousness 
in thought are therefore by themselves not yet concepts 
of understanding of objects (categories), but mere logical 
functions, which present no object to our thought to be 
known, and therefore do not present myself either as an 
object to be known. It is not a consciousness of the deter- 
mining, but only that of the determinable self, that is, of my 
internal intuition (so far as the manifold in it can be con- 
nected in accordance with the general condition of the 
unity of apperception in thought) which forms the object. 

i . In all judgments I am always the determining sub- 
ject only of the relation which constitutes the judgment. 
That I, who think, can be considered in thinking as 
subject only, and as something not simply inherent in the 
thinking, as predicate, is an apodictical and even iden- 
tical proposition; but it does not mean that, as an object, 
I am a self-dependent being or a substance. The latter 
would be saying a great deal, and requires for its support 
data which are not found in the thinking, perhaps (so far 
as I consider only the thinking subject as such) more 
than I shall ever rind in it. 

Kant concludes that in the first syllogism of tran- 
scendental psychology reason imposes upon us an appar- 
ent knowledge only, by representing the constant logical 
subject of thought as the knowledge of the real subject 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 55 

in which that knowledge inheres. Of that subject, how- 
ever, we have not and can not have the slightest knowl- 
edge, because consciousness is that which alone changes 
representations into thoughts, and in which therefore, as 
the transcendental subject, all our perceptions must be 
found. Beside this logical meaning of the I, we have no 
knowledge of the subject in itself, which forms the sub- 
stratum and foundation of it and of all our thoughts. It 
signifies therefore a substance in idea only, and not in 
reality. 

2. That the Ego of apperception, and therefore the Ego 
in every act of thought, is a singular which can not be 
dissolved into a plurality of subjects, and that it there- 
fore signifies a logically simple subject, follows from the 
very concept of thinking, and is consequently an analyt- 
ical proposition. But this does not mean that a thinking 
Ego is a simple substance, as rational psychology would 
have us believe for that would then indeed be a synthet- 
ical proposition. The concept of substance always 
relates to intuitions which, with me, can not be other but 
sensuous, and which therefore he completely outside 
the field of the understanding and its thinking, which 
alone is intended here, when we say that the Ego, in 
thinking, is simple. It would indeed be strange, if what 
elsewhere requires so great an effort, namely, to dis- 
tinguish in what is given by intuition what is substance, 
and still more, whether that substance can be simple 
(as in the case of the component parts of matter), should 
in our case be given to us so readily in what is really the 
poorest of all representations, and, as it were, by an act 
of revelation. 



156 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

The nerve of the argument of rational psychology for 
the soul as a simple substance lies in the proposition that, 
in order to constitute a thought, the many representa- 
tions must be comprehended under the absolute unity 
of the thinking subject. But this proposition can neither 
be proved from concepts, nor can it be derived from ex- 
perience. As in the former paralogism therefore, so here 
also, the formal proposition of apperception, I think, 
remains the sole ground on which rational psychology 
ventures to undertake the extension of its knowledge. 
That proposition, I think, however, is only the form of 
apperception, that is a purely subjective condition. The 
simplicity of the representation of a subject is not there- 
fore a knowledge of the simplicity of the subject. 

3. The proposition of the identity of myself amidst 
the manifold of which I am conscious, likewise follows 
from the concepts themselves, and is therefore analyt- 
ical; but the identity of the subject of which, in all its 
representations, I may become conscious, does not refer 
to the intuition by which it is given as an object, and 
can not therefore signify the identity of the person, by 
which is understood the consciousness of the identity of 
one's own substance, as a thinking being, in all the 
changes of circumstances. In order to prove this, the 
mere analysis of the proposition, I think, would avail 
nothing: but different synthetical judgments would be 
required, which are based on the given intuition. 

In my own consciousness, therefore, the identity of 
person is inevitably present. But this does not establish 
the rationalistic contention of personal identity. For the 
identity of my consciousness is merely a formal condition 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 57 

of my thoughts and their coherence, and proves in no 
way the numerical identity of my subject, in which, in 
spite of the logical identity of the I, such a change may 
have passed as to make it impossible that it should retain 
its identity, though we may still attribute to it the same 
name of I, which in every other state, and even in the 
change of the subject, might yet retain the thought of 
the preceding and hand it over to the subsequent sub- 
ject.* 

4. To say that I distinguish my own existence, as that 
of a thinking being, from other things outside me (one 
of them being my body) is likewise an analytical proposi- 
tion; for other things are things which I conceive as 
different from myself. But, whether such a conscious- 
ness of myself is even possible without things outside me, 
whereby representations are given to me, and whether 
I could exist merely as a thinking being (without being 
a man), I do not know at all by that proposition. 

Nothing therefore is gained by the analysis of the 

* Kant's note. An elastic ball, which impinges on another in 
a straight line, communicates to the second its whole motion, and 
therefore (if we only consider the places in space) its whole state. 
If then, in analogy with such bodies, we admit substances of 
which the one communicates to the other representations with 
consciousness, we could imagine a whole series of them, in which 
the first communicates its state and its consciousness to the sec- 
ond, the second its own state with that of the first substance to a 
third, and this again all these states of the former, together with 
its own, and a consciousness of them, to another. That last sub- 
stance would be conscious of all the states of the previously 
changed substances, as of its own, because all of them had been 
transferred to it with the consciousness of them; but for all that 
it would not have been the same person in all those states. 



158 INTRODUCTION TO KANT's CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

consciousness of myself, in thought in general, towards 
the knowledge of myself as an object. The logical anal- 
ysis of thinking in general is simply mistaken for a meta- 
physical determination of the object. 

It would be a great, nay, even the only objection to the 
whole of our critique, if there were a possibility of proving 
a priori that all thinking beings are in themselves simple 
substances, that as such (as a consequence of the same 
argument) personality is inseparable from them, and 
that they are conscious of their existence as distinct from 
all matter. For we should thus have made a step beyond 
the world of sense and entered into the field of noumena, 
and after that no one could dare to question our right of 
advancing further, of settling in it, and, as each of us is 
favored by luck, taking possession of it. The proposition 
that every thinking being is, as such, a simple substance, 
is synthetical a priori, because, first, it goes beyond the 
concept on which it rests, and adds to act of thinking in 
general the mode of existence; and secondly, because it 
adds to that concept a predicate (simplicity) which can 
not be given in any experience. Hence synthetical 
propositions a priori would be not only admissible, as 
we maintained, in reference to objects of possible ex- 
perience, and then only as principles of the possibility 
of that experience, but could be extended to things in 
general and to things in themselves, a result which would 
put an end to the whole of our critique, and bid us to 
leave everything as we found it. However, the danger 
is not so great, if only we look more closely into the 
matter. 

In this process of rational psychology, there lurks a 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 59 

paralogism, which may be represented by the following 
syllogism. 

That which can not be conceived otherwise than as a 
subject, does not exist otherwise than as a subject, and 
is therefore a substance. 

A thinking being, considered as such, can not be con- 
ceived otherwise than as a subject. 

Therefore it exists also as such only, that is, as a 
substance. 

In the major they speak of a being that can be thought 
in every respect, and therefore also as it may be given in 
intuition. In the minor, however, they speak of it only 
so far as it considers itself, as subject, with respect to the 
thinking and the unity of consciousness only, but not 
at the same time in respect to the intuition whereby this 
unity is given as an object of thinking. The conclusion, 
therefore, has been drawn by a sophism, and more 
especially by sophisma figured dictionis* 

* Kant's note. The thinking is taken in each of the two prem- 
ises in a totally different meaning: — in the major, as it refers 
to an object in general (and therefore also as it may be given 
in intuition), but in the minor, only as it exists in its relation to 
self-consciousness, where no object is thought of, but where we 
only represent the relation to the self as the subject (as the form 
of thought). In the former, things are spoken of that can not be 
conceived otherwise than as subjects; while in the second we do 
not speak of things, but of the thinking (abstraction being made 
of all objects), wherein the Ego always serves as the subject of 
consciousness. The conclusion, therefore, ought not to be that I 
can not exist otherwise than as a subject, but only, that in thinking 
my existence I can use myself as the subject of a judgment only. 
This is an identical proposition, and teaches us nothing whatever 
as to the mode of our existence. 



l6o INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

That we are perfectly right in thus resolving that 
famous argument into a paralogism, will be clearly seen 
in the light of the contention that the concept of a thing, 
which can exist by itself as a subject, and not as a mere 
predicate, carries as yet no objective reality, that is, that 
we can not know whether any object at all belongs to it, 
it being impossible for us to understand the possibility 
of such a mode of existence. It yields us therefore no 
knowledge at all. If such a concept is to indicate, under 
the name of a substance, an object that can be given, 
and thus become knowledge, it must be made to rest 
on a permanent intuition, as the indispensable condition 
of the objective reality of a concept, that is, as that by 
which alone the object can be given. In internal intui- 
tion, however, we have nothing permanent, for the Ego 
is only the consciousness of my thinking; and if we do 
not go beyond this thinking, we are without the necessary 
condition for applying the concept of substance, that 
is, of an independent subject, to the self, as a thinking 
being. Thus the simplicity of the substance entirely 
disappears with the objective reality of the concept, 
and is changed into a purely logical qualitative unity of 
self-consciousness in thinking in general, whether the 
subject be composite or not. 

REFUTATION OF MENDELSSOHN'S PROOF OF THE PER- 
MANENCE OF THE SOUL 

This acute philosopher perceived very quickly how the 
ordinary argument that the soul (if it is once admitted 
to be a simple being) can not cease to exist by decomposi- 
tion, was insufficient to prove its necessary continuance, 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC l6l 

because it might cease to exist by simply vanishing. He 
therefore tried, in his Phaedon, to prove that the soul 
was not liable to that kind of perishing which would be a 
real annihilation, by endeavoring to show that a simple 
being can not cease to exist, because as it could not be 
diminished, and thus -gradually lose something of its 
existence, and be changed, by little and little, into 
nothing (it having no parts, and therefore no plurality in 
itself), there could be no time between the one moment 
in which it exists, and the other in which it exists no 
longer; and this would be impossible. 

He did not consider, however, that, though we might 
allow to the soul this simple nature, namely, that it con- 
tains nothing manifold, nothing by the side of each other, 
and therefore no extensive quantity, yet we could not 
deny to it, as little as to any other existing thing, in- 
tensive quantity, that is a degree of reality with respect 
to all its faculties, nay, to all which constitutes its exist- 
ence. Such a degree of reality might diminish by an 
infinite number of smaller degrees, and thus the supposed 
substance (the thing, the permanence of which has not 
yet been established), might be changed into nothing, 
not indeed through decomposition, but through a gradual 
remission of its powers, or, if I may say so, through 
elanguescence. For even consciousness has always a 
degree, which admits of being diminished,* and therefore 

* Kant's note. Clearness is not, as the logicians maintain, the 
consciousness of a representation; for a certain degree of conscious- 
ness, though insufficient for recollection, must exist, even in many- 
dark representations, because without all consciousness we should 
make no distinction in the connection of dark representations, 



162 

also the faculty of being conscious of oneself, as well as 
all other faculties. 

The permanence of the soul, therefore, considered 
merely as an object of the internal sense, remains un- 
demonstrated and undemonstrable, though its per- 
manence in life, while the thinking being (as man) is at 
the same time to itself an object of the external senses, 
is clear by itself. But this does not satisfy the rational 
psychologist, who undertakes to prove, from mere con- 
cepts, the absolute permanence of the soul, even beyond 
this life * 

which yet we are able to do with the notae of many concepts 
(such as those of right and justice, or as a musician does who in 
improvising strikes several keys at once). A representation is 
clear in which the consciousness is sufficient for a consciousness 
of its difference from the others. If the consciousness is sufficient 
for distinguishing, but not for a consciousness of the difference, 
the representation would still have to be called dark. There is, 
therefore, an infinite number of degrees of consciousness, down 
to its complete vanishing. 

* Kant's note. Those who, in establishing the possibility of a 
new theory, imagine that they have done enough if they can show 
triumphantly that no one can show a contradiction in their prem- 
ises (as do those who believe that they understand the possibility 
of thinking, of which they have an example in the empirical in- 
tuitions of human life only, even after the cessation of life) can 
be greatly embarrassed by other possible theories, which are not a 
whit bolder than their own. Such is, for instance, the possibility 
of a division of simple substance into several, or of the coalition of 
several substances into one simple substance. For although 
divisibility presupposes a composite, it does not necessarily re- 
quire a composite of substances, but of degrees only (of the man- 
ifold faculties) of one and the same substance. As, then, we may 
conceive all powers and faculties of the soul, even that of con- 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 63 

If now we take the above propositions in synthetical 
connection, as indeed they must be taken, as valid for all 
thinking beings, in a system of rational psychology, and 
proceed from the category of relation, with the proposi- 
tion, all thinking beings, as such, are substances, back- 
wards through the series till the circle is completed, we 

sciousness, as diminished by one-half, the substance still remaining, 
we may also represent to ourselves, without any contradiction, 
that extinguished half as preserved, though not within it, but 
outside it, so that as the whole of what is real in it and has a 
degree, and therefore the whole existence of it, without any rest, 
has been halved, another separate substance would arise apart 
from it. For the plurality, which has been divided, existed before, 
though not as a plurality of substances yet of every reality as a 
quantum of existence in it, and the unity of substance was only 
a mode of existence, which by mere division has been changed into 
a plurality of substantiality. In the same manner several simple 
substances might coalesce again into one, nothing being lost 
thereby, but merely the plurality of substantiality; so that one 
substance would contain in itself the degree of reality of all former 
substances together. We might suppose that the simple substances 
which give us matter as a phenomenon (not indeed through a 
mechanical or chemical influence upon each other, but yet, it may 
be, by some unknown influence, of which the former is only a 
manifestation), produce by such a dynamical division of parental 
souls, taken as intensive quantities, what may be called child- 
souls, while they themselves repair their loss again through a 
coalition with new matter of the same kind. I am far from allowing 
the slightest value of validity to such vague speculations, and I 
hope that the principles of our Analytic have given a sufficient 
warning against using the categories (as, for instance, that of 
substance) for any but empirical purposes. But if the rationalist 
is bold enough to create an independent being out of the mere 
faculty of thought, without any permanent intuition, by which 
an object can be given, simply because the unity of apperception 



164 

arrive in the end at their existence, and this, according 
to that system, they are not only conscious of, independ- 
ently of external things, but are supposed to be able to 
determine it even of themselves (with respect to that 
permanence which necessarily belongs to the character 
of substance). Hence it follows, that in this rational- 
istic system idealism is inevitable, at least problem- 
atical idealism, because, if the existence of external 
things is not required at all for the determination 
of one's own existence in time, their existence is really 
a gratuitous assumption of which no proof can ever be 
given. 

If, on the contrary, we proceed analytically, taking 
the proposition, I think, which involves existence (ac- 
cording to the category of modality) as given, and 
analyze it, in order to find out whether, and how, the 
Ego determines its existence in space and time by it 
alone, the propositions of rational psychology would 
not start from the concept of a thinking being, in 
general, but from a reality, and the inference would 
consist in determining from the manner in which that 
reality is thought, after everything that is empirical 
in it has been removed, what belongs to a thinking 
being in general. This may be shown by the following 
table: 

in thought does not allow him to explain it as something com- 
posite, instead of simply confessing that he cannot explain the 
possibility of a thinking nature, why should not a materialist, 
though he can as little appeal to experience in support of his 
theories, be entitled to use the same boldness, and use his prin- 
ciple for the opposite purpose, though retaining the formal unity 
on which his opponent relied? 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC l6$ 

I 

I think, 

2 3 

as Subject, as simple Subject, 

4 
as identical Subject, in every state of my thought. 

As it has not been determined in the second proposition, 
whether I can exist and be conceived to exist as a subject 
only, and not also as a predicate of something else, the 
concept of subject is here taken as logical only, and it 
remains undetermined whether we are to understand by 
it a substance or not. In the third proposition, however, 
the absolute unity of apperception, the simple I, being 
the representation to which all connection or separation 
(which constitute thought) relate, assumes its own im- 
portance, although nothing is determined as yet with 
regard to the nature of the subject, or its subsistence. 
The apperception is something real, and it is only pos- 
sible, if it is simple. In space, however, there is nothing 
real that is simple, for points (the only simple in space) 
are limits only, and not themselves something which, as a 
part, serves to constitute space. From this follows the 
impossibility of explaining the nature of myself, as merely 
a thinking subject, from the materialistic point of view. 
As, however, in the first proposition, my existence is 
taken for granted, for it is not said in it that every think- 
ing being exists (this would predicate too much, namely, 
absolute necessity of them), but only, i* exist , as thinking, 
the proposition itself is empirical, and contains only the 



1 66 INTRODUCTION TO KANT's CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

determinability of my existence, in reference to my rep- 
resentations in time. But as for that purpose again I 
require, first of all, something permanent, such as is 
not given to me at all in internal intuition, so far as I 
think myself, it is really impossible by that simple self- 
consciousness to determine the manner in which I exist, 
whether as a substance or as an accident. Thus, if 
materialism was inadequate to explain my existence, 
spiritualism is equally insufficient for that purpose, and 
the conclusion is, that, in no way whatsoever can we 
know anything of the nature of our soul, so far as the 
possibility of its separate existence is concerned. 

And how indeed should it be possible by means of that 
unity of consciousness which we only know because it is 
indispensable to us for the very possibility of experience, 
to get beyond experience (our existence in life), and even 
to extend our knowledge to the nature of all thinking 
beings in general, by the empirical, but, with reference 
to every kind of intuition, undetermined proposition, 
I think. 

There is, therefore, no rational psychology, as a 
doctrine, furnishing any addition to our self-knowledge, 
but only as a discipline, fixing unpassable limits to spec- 
ulative reason in this field, partly to keep us from throw- 
ing ourselves into the arms of a soulless materialism, 
partly to warn us against losing ourselves in a vague, and, 
with regard to practical life, baseless spiritualism. It 
reminds us at the same time to look upon this refusal of 
our reason to give a satisfactory answer to such curi- 
ous questions, which reach beyond the limits of this life, 
as a hint to turn our self-knowledge away from fruit- 



TKANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 67 

less speculations to a fruitful practical use — a use which, 
though directed always to objects of experience only, 
derives its principle from a higher source, and so regulates 
our conduct, as if our destination reached far beyond 
experience, and therefore far beyond this life. 

We see from all this, that rational psychology owes 
its origin to a mere misunderstanding. The unity of 
consciousness, on which the categories are founded, is 
mistaken for an intuition of the subject as object, and 
the category of substance applied to it. But that unity 
is only the unity in thought, by which alone no object is 
given, and to which, therefore, the category of substance, 
which always presupposes a given intuition, can not be 
applied, and therefore the subject can not be known. 
The subject of the categories, therefore, can not, by 
thinking them, receive a concept of itself, as an object of 
the categories; for in order to think the categories, it 
must presuppose its pure self-consciousness, the very 
thing that had to be explained. In like manner the sub- 
ject, in which the representation of time has its original 
source, can not determine by it its own existence in time; 
and if the latter is impossible, the former, as a deter- 
mination of one's self (as of a thinking being in general) 
by means of the categories, is equally so.* 

* Kant's note. The I think is, as has been stated, an empirical 
proposition, and contains within itself the proposition, I exist. I 
can not say, however, everything which thinks exists; for in that 
case the property of thinking would make all beings which possess 
it necessary beings. Therefore, my existence can not, as Descartes 
supposed, be considered as derived from the proposition, I think 
(for in that case the major, everything that thinks exists, ought 
to have preceded), but is identical with it. It expresses an in- 



i68 

Thus vanishes, as an idle dream, that knowledge 
which was to go beyond the limits of possible experience, 
and was connected no doubt with the highest interests 
of humanity, so far at least as speculative philosophy was 
to supply it. Yet no unimportant service has thus been 
rendered to reason by the severity of our criticism, in 
proving, at the same time, the impossibility of settling 
anything dogmatically with reference to an object of 
experience, beyond the limits of experience, and thus 
securing it against all possible assertions to the contrary. 
This can only be done in two ways, either by proving 
one's own proposition apodictically, or, if that does not 
succeed, by trying to discover the causes of that failure, 
definite empirical intuition, that is, a perception (and proves, 
therefore, that this proposition, asserting existence, is itself based 
on sensation, which belongs to sensibility), but it precedes ex- 
perience, which is meant to determine the object of perception 
through the categories in respect to time. Existence, therefore, is 
here not yet a category, which never refers to an indefinitely given 
object, but only to one of which we have a concept, and of which 
we wish to know whether it exists also apart from that conception 
or no. An indefinite perception signifies here something real only 
that has been given merely for thinking in general, not therefore 
as a phenomenon, nor as a thing in itself (noumenon), but as 
something that really exists and is designated as such in the prop- 
osition, I think. For it must be observed,. that if I have called the 
proposition, I think, an empirical proposition, I did not mean to 
say thereby, that the ego in that proposition is an empirical rep- 
resentation; it is rather purely intellectual, because it belongs to 
thought in general. Without some empirical representation, how- 
ever, which supplies the matter for thought, the act, I think, 
would not take place, and the empirical is only the condi- 
tion of the application or of the use of the pure intellectual 
faculty. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 69 

which, if they lie in the necessary limits of our reason, 
must force every opponent to submit to exactly the same 
law of renunciation with reference to any claims to 
dogmatic assertion. 

Nothing is lost, however, by this with regard to the 
right, nay, the necessity of admitting a future life, accord- 
ing to the principles of practical, as connected with the 
speculative employment of reason. It is known besides, 
that a purely speculative proof has never been able to 
exercise any influence on the ordinary reason of men. 
It stands so entirely upon the point of a hair, that even 
the schools can only keep it from falling so long as they 
keep it constantly spinning round like a top, so that, even 
in their own eyes, it yields no permanent foundation 
upon which anything could be built. The proofs which 
are useful for the world at large retain their value un- 
diminished, nay, they gain in clearness and natural 
power, by the surrender of those dogmatical pretensions, 
placing reason in its own peculiar domain, namely, the 
system of ends, which is, however, at the same time the 
system of nature; so that reason, as a practical faculty 
by itself, without being limited by the conditions of 
nature, becomes justified in extending the system of ends, 
and with it, our own existence, beyond the limits of 
experience and of life. According to the analogy with 
the nature of living beings in this world, in which reason 
must necessarily admit the principle that no organ, no 
faculty, no impulse, can be found, as being either super- 
fluous or disproportionate to its use, and therefore pur- 
poseless, but that everything is adequate to its destina- 
tion in life, man, who alone can contain in himself the 



170 

highest end of all this, would be the only creature ex- 
cepted from it. For, his natural dispositions, not only 
so far as he uses them according to his talents and im- 
pulses, but more especially the moral law within him, 
go so far beyond all that is useful and advantageous in 
this life, that he is taught thereby, in the absence of all 
advantages, even of the shadowy hope of posthumous 
fame, to esteem the mere consciousness of righteous- 
ness beyond everything else, feeling an inner call, by his 
conduct in this world and a surrender of many advan- 
tages, to render himself fit to become the citizen of a 
better world, which exists in his idea only. This powerful 
and incontrovertible proof, accompanied by our con- 
stantly increasing recognition of a design pervading all 
that we see around us, and by a contemplation of the 
immensity of creation, and therefore also by the con- 
sciousness of an unlimited possibility in the extension 
of our knowledge, and a desire commensurate therewith, 
all this remains and always will remain, although we 
must surrender the hope of ever being able to understand, 
from the mere theoretical knowledge of ourselves, the 
necessary continuance of our existence. 

CONCLUSION OF THE SOLUTION OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL 
PARALOGISM 

The dialectical illusion in rational psychology arises 
from our confounding an idea of reason (that of a pure 
intelligence) with the altogether indefinite concept of a 
thinking being in general. What we are doing is, that 
we conceive ourselves for the sake of a possible experience, 
taking no account, as yet, of any real experience, and 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 171 

thence conclude that we are able to become conscious 
of our existence, independently of experience and of its 
empirical conditions. We are, therefore, confounding 
the possible abstraction of our own empirically deter- 
mined existence with the imagined consciousness of a 
possible separate existence of our thinking self, and we 
bring ourselves to believe that we know the substantial 
within us as the transcendental subject, while what we 
have in our thoughts is only the unity of consciousness, 
on which, as on the mere form of knowledge, all deter- 
mination is based. 

The task of explaining the community of the soul with 
the body does not properly fall within the province of 
that psychology of which we are here speaking, because 
that psychology tries to prove the personality of the soul, 
apart also from that community (after death), being 
therefore transcendent, in the proper sense of that word, 
inasmuch as, though dealing with an object of experience, 
it deals with it only so far as it has ceased to be an object 
of experience. According to our doctrine, however, a 
sufficient answer might be returned to that question also. 
The difficulty of the task consists, as is well known, in the 
assumed heterogeneousness of the object of the internal 
sense (the soul), and the objects of the external senses, the 
formal condition of the intuition with regard to the 
former being time only, with regard to the latter, time 
and space. If we consider, however, that both kinds of ob- 
jects thus differ from each other, not internally, but so far 
only as the one appears externally to the other, and that 
possibly what is at the bottom of phenomenal matter, 
as a thing in itself, may not be so heterogeneous after all 



172 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

as we imagine, that difficulty vanishes, and there re- 
mains that one difficulty only, how a community of sub- 
stances is possible at all; a difficulty which it is not the 
business of psychology to solve, and which, as the reader 
will easily understand, after what has been said in the 
Analytic of fundamental powers and faculties, lies un- 
doubtedly beyond the limits of all human knowledge. 

GENERAL NOTE ON THE TRANSITION FROM RATIONAL 
PSYCHOLOGY TO COSMOLOGY 

The proposition, I think, or, I exist thinking, is an 
empirical proposition. Such a proposition is based on an 
empirical intuition, and its object is phenomenal: so that 
it might seem as if, according to our theory, the soul was 
changed altogether, even in thinking, into something 
phenomenal, and our consciousness itself, as merely 
phenomenal, would thus indeed refer to nothing. 

Thinking, taken by itself, is a logical function only, 
and therefore pure spontaneity, in connecting the mani- 
fold of a merely possible intuition. It does not rep- 
resent the subject of consciousness, as phenomenal, for 
the simple reason, that it takes no account whatsoever 
of the manner of intuition, whether it be sensuous or 
intellectual. I do not thereby represent myself to my- 
self, either as I am, or as I appear to myself, but I only 
conceive of myself, as of any other object, without 
taking account of the manner of intuition. If thereby 
I represent myself as the subject of my thoughts, or as 
the ground of thinking, these modes of representation are 
not the categories of substance or cause, because these 
are functions of thought (judgment) as applied already 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC [73 

to our sensuous intuition, such sensuous intuition being 
necessary, if I wish to know myself. But I only wish to 
become conscious of myself as thinking, and as I take 
no account of what my own self may be as a phenomenon, 
it is quite possible that it might be a phenomenon only 
to me, who thinks, but not to me, so far as I am thinking. 
In the consciousness of myself in mere thinking I am the 
substance itself ', but of that substance nothing is thus 
given me for thinking. 

The proposition, I think, if it means, / exist thinking, 
is not merely logical function, but determines the subject 
(which then is at the same time object) with reference to 
its existence, and is impossible without the internal sense, 
the intuition of which always supplies the object, not as a 
thing in itself, but as phenomenal only. Here, therefore, 
we have no longer mere spontaneity of thinking, but also 
receptivity of intuition, that is, the thinking of myself 
applied to the empirical intuition of the same subject. 
In that empirical intuition the thinking self would have 
to look for the conditions under which its logical func- 
tions can be employed as categories of substance, cause, 
etc., in order not only to distinguish itself as an object 
by itself, through the Ego } but to determine the mode of 
its existence also, that is, to know itself as a noumenon. 
This, as we know, is impossible, because the internal 
empirical intuition is sensuous, and supplies us with 
phenomenal data only, which furnish nothing to the 
object of the pure consciousness for the knowledge of its 
own separate existence, but can serve the purpose of 
experience only. 

Supposing, however, that we should hereafter discover, 



174 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

not indeed in experience, but in certain (not only logical 
rules, but) a priori established laws of pure reason, con- 
cerning our existence, some ground for admitting our- 
selves, entirely a priori, as determining and ruling our 
own existence, there would then be a spontaneity by 
which our reality would be determinable without the 
conditions of empirical intuition, and we should then 
perceive that in the consciousness of our existing there 
is contained a priori something which may serve to deter- 
mine with respect to some inner faculty, our existence, 
which otherwise can be determined sensuously only with 
reference to an intelligible, though, of course, an ideal 
world only. 

This, however, would not in the least benefit the 
attempts of rational psychology. For though through 
that wonderful faculty, which becomes first revealed to 
myself by the consciousness of a moral law, I should have 
a principle, purely intellectual, for a determination of my 
existence, what would be its determining predicates? 
No other but those which must be given to me in sen- 
suous intuition; and I should therefore find myself again 
in the same situation where I was before in rational 
psychology, requiring sensuous intuitions in order to 
give significance to the concepts of my understanding, 
such as substance, cause, etc., by which alone I can gain 
a knowledge of myself; and these intuitions can never 
carry me beyond the field of experience. Nevertheless, 
for practical purposes, which always concern objects of 
experience, I should be justified in applying these con- 
cepts, in analogy with their theoretical employment, to 
liberty also and to the subject of liberty, by taking them 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 75 

only as logical functions of subject and predicate, of 
cause and effect. According to them, acts or effects, as 
following those (moral) laws, would be so determined 
that they may together with the laws of nature be ex- 
plained in accordance with the categories of substance 
and cause; though arising in reality from a totally dif- 
ferent principle. All this is only meant to prevent a 
misunderstanding to which our doctrine, which repre- 
sents self-intuition as purely phenomenal, might easily 
be exposed. 

The Paralogisms of Rational Psychology are so clearly 
stated by Kant that a resume here is unnecessary. They 
constitute one of the most important parts of the Critique 
since they throw much light on the Deduction of the 
Categories and the Principles of the Pure Understanding. 
They also supplement those sections in so far that there 
the meaning of the transcendental unity of apperception 
was not so clearly stated. The Paralogisms bring out 
more clearly than does his Refutation of Idealism, 
Kant's general attitude. 

The sections just considered clearly show that Kant 
believes the transcendental unity of apperception to be 
merely logical. He insists that there is no conscious- 
ness of self without external perceptions. This makes it 
impossible to admit a substantial self which precedes 
experience, and which renders experience possible. At 
the beginning of the Critique, it is true, Kant seemed to 
hold such a substantial view of the self. But a substantial 
view can not do justice to the organic nature of expe- 
rience; and this organic inter-dependence is strongly 



176 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

emphasized later in Kant, and is one of the most valuable 
results of the Critique. Hume, like the later Kant, 
opposed the same substantial view of the self, but his 
atomic view of experience prevented him from making a 
satisfactory solution of the problem. 

Another phase of the significance of the Paralogisms 
is indicated when Kant holds that the reality which lies 
at the basis of internal intuition as well as of external 
phenomena, can not be known to be either matter or 
thinking being in itself; but that it is merely a basis of 
phenomena, unknown to us, which gives rise to the em- 
pirical experience of both. Of course, as to the ultimate 
basis of all phenomenal reality, we can not know at all 
what it is, and idealism and materialism seem equally 
unsatisfactory. 

It is obvious that for Kant the unity of the pure ego 
as the highest principle of all knowledge represents 
merely an ideal. Kant is not referring to any actual 
transcendental ego either human or divine. The tran- 
scendental ego represents, in his system, no more than 
the logical correlative of a completely unified world. 
Consciousness in general, furthermore, is not a universal 
consciousness. These terms are valuable as principles 
of explanation but theoretical knowledge is unable to 
prove that they exist as actual facts.* 

Furthermore, the Paralogisms emphasize the impos- 
sibility of applying the doctrine of the substantiality of 
the self in an argument for the immortality of the soul. 

* Cf . pp. 215 ff. Andrew Seth, Hegelianism and Personality, 
pp. 27 ff. J. E. Creighton, Philosophical Review, Vol. VI, No. 2, 
pp. 162-69. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 77 

For since self-consciousness is merely a logical relation, is 
merely a functional unity involved in the forms of knowl- 
edge, — the categories, — it is the emptiest of all concep- 
tions, and so in no wise enables us to assert immortality. 

The Antinomy of Pure Reason 

As the paralogisms of pure reason form the foundation 
for a dialectical psychology, the antinomy of pure reason 
will place before our eyes the transcendental principles 
of a pretended pure (rational) cosmology, not in order 
to show that it is valid and can be accepted, but, as may 
be guessed from the very name of the antinomy of reason, 
in order to expose it as an idea surrounded by deceptive 
and false appearances, and utterly irreconcilable with 
phenomena. 

A dialectical proposition of pure reason must have 
this characteristic to distinguish it from all purely so- 
phistical propositions, first, that it does not refer to a 
gratuitous question, but to one which human reason in 
its natural progress must necessarily encounter, and, 
secondly, that it, as well as its opposite, carries with 
itself not a merely artificial illusion, which when once 
seen through disappears, but a natural and inevitable 
illusion, which, even when it deceives us no longer, al- 
ways remains, and though rendered harmless, can not be 
annihilated. 

This dialectical doctrine will not refer to the unity of 
the understanding in concepts of experience, but to the 
unity of reason in mere ideas, the condition of which, as 
it is meant to agree, as a synthesis according to rules, 
with the understanding, and yet at the same time, as the 



178 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

absolute unity of that synthesis, with reason, must 
either, if it is adequate to the unity of reason, be too 
great for the understanding, or, if adequate to the under- 
standing, too small for reason. Hence a conflict must 
arise, which can not be avoided, do what we will. 

FIRST ANTINOMY 

Thesis 

The world has a beginning in time, and 
is limited also with regard to space. 

Proof 

For if we assumed that the world had no beginning in 
time, then an eternity must have elapsed up to every 
given point of time, and therefore an infinite series of 
successive states of things must have passed in the world. 
The infinity of a series, however, consists in this, that it 
never can be completed by means of a successive syn- 
thesis. Hence an infinite past series of worlds is impos- 
sible, and the beginning of the world a necessary condi- 
tion of its existence. This was what had to be proved 
first. 

With regard to the second, let us assume again the 
opposite. In that case the world would be given as an 
infinite whole of co-existing things. Now we can not con- 
ceive in any way the extension of a quantum, which is 
not given within certain limits to every intuition, except 
through the synthesis of its parts, nor the totality of 
such a quantum in any way, except through a completed 
synthesis, or by the repeated addition of unity to itself. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 79 

In order therefore to conceive the world, which fills all 
space, as a whole, the successive synthesis of the parts 
of an infinite world would have to be looked upon as 
completed; that is, an infinite time would have to be 
looked upon as elapsed, during the enumeration of all 
co-existing things. This is impossible. Hence an infinite 
aggregate of real things can not be regarded as a given 
whole, nor, therefore, as given at the same time. Hence 
it follows that the world is not infinite, as regards exten- 
sion in space, but enclosed in limits. This was the second 
that had to be proved. 

Antithesis 

The world has no beginning and no limits 
in space, but is infinite, in respect both 
to time and space. 

Proof 

For let us assume that it has a beginning. Then, as 
beginning is an existence which is preceded by a time in 
which the thing is not, it would follow that antecedently 
there was a time in which the world was not, that is, an 
empty time. In an empty time, however, it is impossible 
that anything should take its beginning, because of such 
a time no part possesses any condition as to existence 
rather than non-existence, which condition could dis- 
tinguish that part from any other (whether produced by 
itself or through another cause) . Hence, though many a 
series of things may take its beginning in the world, the 
world itself can have no beginning, and in reference to 
time past is infinite. 



l8o INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

With regard to the second, let us assume again the 
opposite, namely, that the world is finite and limited in 
space. In that case the world would exist in an empty 
space without limits. We should therefore have not only 
a relation of things in space, but also of things to space. 
As however the world is an absolute whole, outside of 
which no object of intuition, and therefore no correlate 
of the world can be found, the relation of the world to 
empty space would be a relation to no object. Such a 
relation, and with it the limitation of the world by empty 
space, is nothing, and therefore the world is not limited 
with regard to space, that is, it is infinite in extension. 

SECOND ANTINOMY 

Thesis 

Every compound substance in the world 
consists of simple parts, and nothing 
exists anywhere but the simple, or 
what is composed of it. 

Proof 

For let us assume that compound substances did not 
consist of simple parts, then, if all composition is removed 
in thought, there would be no compound part, and (as 
no simple parts are admitted) no simple part either, that 
is, there would remain nothing, and there would therefore 
be no substance at all. Either, therefore, it is impossible 
to remove all composition in thought, or, after its re- 
moval, there must remain something that exists without 
composition, that is the simple. In the former case the 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 181 

compound could not itself consist of substances (because 
with them composition is only an accidental relation of 
substances, which substances, as permanent beings must 
subsist without it). As this contradicts the supposition, 
there remains only the second view, namely, that the 
substantial compounds in the world consist of simple 
parts. 

It follows as an immediate consequence that all the 
things in the world are simple beings, that their com- 
position is only an external condition, and that, though 
we are unable to remove these elementary substances 
from their state of composition and isolate them, reason 
must conceive them as the first subjects of all com- 
position, and therefore, antecedently to it, as simple 
beings. 

Antithesis 

No compound thing in the world consists 
of simple parts, and there exists no- 
where in the world anything simple. 

Proof 

Assume that a compound thing, a substance, consists 
of simple parts. Then as all external relation, and there- 
fore all composition of substances also, is possible in space 
only, it follows that space must consist of as many parts 
as the parts of the compound that occupies the space. 
Space, however, does not consist of simple parts, but of 
spaces. Every part of a compound, therefore, must 
occupy a space. Now the absolutely primary parts of 
every compound are simple. It follows therefore that 



1 82 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the simple occupies a space. But as everything real, 
which occupies a space, contains a manifold, the parts 
of which are by the side of each other, and which there- 
fore is compounded, and, as a real compound, com- 
pounded not of accidents (for these could not exist by 
the side of each other, without a substance), but of sub- 
stances, it would follow that the simple is a substantial 
compound, which is self-contradictory. 

The second proposition of the antithesis, that there 
exists nowhere in the world anything simple, is not in- 
tended to mean more than that the existence of the 
absolutely simple can not be proved from any experience 
or perception, whether external or internal, and that the 
absolutely simple is a mere idea, the objective reality of 
which can never be shown in any possible experience, so 
that in the explanation of phenomena it is without any 
application or object. For, if we assumed that an object 
of this transcendental idea might be found in experience, 
the empirical intuition of some one object would have 
to be such as to contain absolutely nothing manifold by 
the side of each other, and combined to a unity. But as, 
from our not being conscious of such a manifold, we can 
not form any valid conclusion as to the entire impos- 
sibility of it in any objective intuition, and as without 
this no absolute simplicity can be established, it follows 
that such simplicity can not be inferred from any per- 
ception whatsoever. As, therefore, an absolutely simple 
object can never be given in any possible experience, 
while the world of sense must be looked upon as the sum 
total of all possible experience, it follows that nothing 
simple exists in it. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 83 

This second part of the antithesis goes far beyond the 
first, which only banished the simple from the intuition 
of the composite, while the second drives it out of the 
whole of nature. Hence we could not attempt to prove 
it out of the concept of any given object of external 
intuition (of the compound), but from its relation to a 
possible experience in general. 

THIRD ANTINOMY 

Thesis 

Causality, according to the laws of nature, is 
not the only causality from which all the 
phenomena of the world can be deduced. In 
order to account for these phenomena it is 
necessary also to admit another causality, 
that of freedom. 

Proof 

Let us assume that there is no other causality but that 
according to the laws of nature. In that case everything 
that takes place, presupposes an anterior state, on which 
it follows inevitably according to a rule. But that ante- 
rior state must itself be something which has taken place 
(which has come to be in time, and did not exist before), 
because, if it had always existed, its effect too would not 
have only just arisen, but have existed always. The 
causality, therefore, of a cause, through which something 
takes place, is itself an event, which again, according 
to the law of nature, presupposes an anterior state and 
its causality, and this again an anterior state, and so on. 



184 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

If, therefore, everything takes place according to mere 
laws of nature, there will always be a secondary only, 
but never a primary beginning, and therefore no com- 
pleteness of the series, on the side of successive causes. 
But the law of nature consists in this, that nothing 
takes place without a cause sufficiently determined 
a priori. Therefore the proposition, that all causality 
is possible according to the laws of nature only, con- 
tradicts itself, if taken in unlimited generality, and it is 
impossible, therefore, to admit that causality as the 
only one. 

We must therefore admit another causality, through 
which something takes place, without its cause being 
further determined according to necessary laws by a 
preceding cause, that is, an absolute spontaneity of causes, 
by which a series of phenomena, proceeding according 
to natural laws, begins by itself; we must consequently 
admit transcendental freedom, without which, even in the 
course of nature, the series of phenomena on the side of 
causes, can never be perfect. 

Antithesis 

There is no freedom, but everything 
in the world takes place entirely 
according to the laws of nature. 

Proof 

If we admit that there is freedom, in the transcenden- 
tal sense, as a particular kind of causality, according to 
which the events in the world could take place, that is a 
faculty of absolutely originating a state, and with it a 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 85 

series of consequences, it would follow that not only a 
series would have its absolute beginning through this 
spontaneity, but the determination of that spontaneity 
itself to produce the series, that is, the causality, would 
have an absolute beginning, nothing preceding it by 
which this act is determined according to permanent 
laws. Every beginning of an act, however, presupposes 
a state in which the cause is not yet active, and a dynam- 
ically primary beginning of an act presupposes a state 
which has no causal connection with the preceding state 
of that cause, that is, in no wise follows from it. Trans- 
cendental freedom is therefore opposed to the law of 
causality, and represents such a connection of successive 
states of effective causes, that no unity of experience is 
possible with it. It is therefore an empty fiction of the 
mind, and not to be met with in any experience. 

We have, therefore, nothing but nature, in which we 
must try to find the connection and order of cosmical 
events. Freedom (independence) from the laws of nature 
is no doubt a deliverance from restraint, but also from the 
guidance of all rules. For we can not say that, instead 
of the laws of nature, laws of freedom may enter into 
the causality of the course of the world, because, if deter- 
mined by laws, it would not be freedom, but nothing 
else but nature. Nature, therefore, and transcendental 
freedom differ from each other like legality and lawless- 
ness. The former, no doubt, imposes upon the under- 
standing the difficult task of looking higher and higher 
for the origin of events in the series of causes, because 
their causality is always conditioned. In return for 
this, however, it promises a complete and well-ordered 



1 86 INTRODUCTION TO KANT 7 S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

unity of experience; while, on the other side, the fiction 
of freedom promises, no doubt, to the inquiring mind, 
rest in the chain of causes, leading him up to an un- 
conditioned causality, which begins to act by itself, but 
which, as it is blind itself, tears the thread of rules by 
which alone a complete and coherent experience is 
possible. 

FOURTH ANTINOMY 

Thesis 

There exists an absolutely necessary 
being belonging to the world, either 
as a part or as a cause of it. 

Proof 

The world of sense, as the sum total of all phenomena, 
contains a series of changes without which even the 
representation of a series of time, which forms the condi- 
tion of the possibility of the world of sense, would not 
be given us. But every change has its condition which 
precedes it in time, and renders it necessary. Now, every- 
thing that is given as conditional presupposes, with 
regard to its existence, a complete series of conditions, 
leading up to that which is entirely unconditioned, and 
alone absolutely necessary. Something absolutely nec- 
essary therefore must exist, if there exists a change as 
its consequence. And this absolutely necessary belongs 
itself to the world of sense. For if we supposed that it 
existed outsi'de that world, then the series of changes in 
the world would derive its origin from it, while the nee- 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 87 

essary cause itself would not belong to the world of 
sense. But this is impossible. For as the beginning of a 
temporal series can be determined only by that which 
precedes it in time, it follows that the highest condition 
of the beginning of a series of changes must exist in the 
time when that series was not yet (because the beginning 
is an existence, preceded by a time in which the thing 
which begins was not yet). Hence the causality of the 
necessary cause of changes and that cause itself belong 
to time and therefore to phenomena (in which alone 
time, as their form, is possible), and it can not therefore 
be conceived as separated from the world of sense, as 
the sum total of all phenomena. It follows, therefore, 
that something absolutely necessary is contained in the 
world, whether it be the whole cosmical series itself, or 
only a part of it. 

Antithesis 

There nowhere exists an absolutely 
necessary being, either within or 
without the world, as the cause 
of it. 

Proof 

If we supposed that the world itself is a necessary 
being, or that a necessary being exists in it, there would 
then be in the series of changes either a beginning, un- 
conditionally necessary, and therefore without a cause, 
which contradicts the dynamical law of the determina- 
tion of all phenomena in time; or the series itself would 
be without any beginning, and though contingent and 



1 88 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

conditioned in all its parts, yet entirely necessary and un- 
conditioned as a whole. This would be self-contradictory, 
because the existence of a multitude can not be necessary, 
if no single part of it possesses necessary existence. 

If we supposed, on the contrary, that there exists an 
absolutely necessary cause of the world, outside the 
world, then that cause, as the highest member in the 
series of causes of cosmical changes, would begin the 
existence of the latter and their series. In that case, 
however, that cause would have to begin to act, and its 
causality would belong to time, and therefore to the sum 
total of phenomena. It would belong to the world, and 
would therefore not be outside the world, which is con- 
trary to our supposition. Therefore, neither in the world, 
nor outside the world (yet in causal connection with it), 
does there exist anywhere an absolutely necessary being. 

Rational cosmology deals with the idea of the world 
of phenomena determined in space and time. But since 
phenomena are determined under space and time rela- 
tions, that determination brings out their dependence 
upon each other, but at the same time prevents a com- 
plete determination of phenomena as a whole. 

We are thus led into a series of dilemmas, in which 
starting with phenomena we try to get the complete con- 
ditions which make them possible. This is done by trying 
to reach either an unconditioned beginning or else a 
complete series which is infinite. Kant holds that in the 
latter situation, we get an infinite series, but one that 
is only potentially infinite in so far that it is reached by a 
regress which is never completed. In the former case, 
the first in space, is a world-limit, a first in time, a world- 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 89 

beginning; or again, in terms of divisibility, we get to a 
simple; or in a series of causes to an originally free activ- 
ity; or so far as existence is concerned, to a necessary 
being. 

For the sake of clearness it may be desirable to sum- 
marize the antinomies in the light of the foregoing 
statement. 

In the first antinomy let us start with the first alter- 
native: the world is limited in time and space. We must 
immediately ask what is the limit, that is, the boundary. 
This must be filled time and space, for if it were empty 
time or space, the world would be bounded by nothing. 
If, on the other hand, it is bounded by filled space and 
time, it is bounded by reality, and then what has been 
taken as the whole world, turns out to be only a portion 
of the world. Let us suppose the other alternative and 
say that the world is not limited in time or space, that is, 
it has no beginning in time and no limits in space. Then 
it follows that there must have been an infinity of elapsed 
time prior to the present moment, and an infinity of 
spaces from the space here, and so we again end in con- 
fusion. In other words, his proof of each of the alter- 
natives consists in showing the impossibility of the 
opposite. 

The second antinomy is the dilemma reached in the 
consideration of the divisibility of matter. Its thesis 
holds that every composite substance consists of simple 
parts. Composition always may be annihilated without 
annihilating the substances so compounded. To say 
that the opposite of the thesis is true, namely, that there 



190 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

is infinite divisibility, that is, composition which does 
not consist of simple parts, is to deny any substantiality 
beneath their accidental combinations, and so is an 
absurdity. Therefore, the opposite of the thesis is false, 
and the thesis is proved. The other alternative is that 
in the world there is no simple substance, and its proof 
again consists in showing the impossibility of the oppo- 
site. Space is never composed of simple parts, for those 
apparently simple spaces are always again composed 
of spaces. What is true of the infinite divisibility of 
space is true of objects in space. The paralogisms also 
showed that the Ego as a simple object is impossible. 
Therefore, in the world there is no simple substance. 

In the third antinomy, the dilemma concerns the 
finiteness or infinity of the causal series. The first alter- 
native asserts that in addition to, and in order to explain 
the orderly sequence of phenomena in nature, there is a 
causality of freedom. The principle of causation de- 
mands that every phenomenon in nature must have its 
antecedent change which produces it, and so on. But 
each member of the series is not the real cause of the 
succeeding member, and so there is no real causality in 
the whole series unless we assert a spontaneity, a causal- 
ity of freedom, that is, without the causality of freedom, 
the law of causality is contradicted. The other alter- 
native asserts that everything happens entirely according 
to the laws of nature, and there is no causality of freedom. 
For, if a free cause exists at the beginning of the series, 
unless we contradict the law of causality, this free cause 
must itself be the result of a prior cause, and that, in 
turn, of another and prior cause, and so on ad infinitum. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 191 

In other words, if there were a free cause, it would itself 
be uncaused and so contradict the law of causality. 

In the fourth antinomy, the dilemma concerns the 
relation of contingency to necessity, and is nothing more 
than the logical continuation of the third antinomy. 
The first alternative of the dilemma, and the thesis of 
this antinomy, asserts the existence either in the world 
or beyond it, of a necessary being, an absolute cause of 
the universe. The proof for it is practically a repetition 
of the proof for the thesis of the third antinomy, with 
this modification, that for the causality of freedom is 
substituted its logical consequence — an absolutely nec- 
essary being. The other alternative asserts that there 
nowhere exists an absolutely necessary being, either 
within or without the world, as a cause of it. A necessary 
being as in the world, and a part of it, can be taken in 
two ways, as existing at the beginning of the world, or, 
as itself constituting the series of phenomena as a whole. 
Taking the former, since every beginning is a moment 
in time, an absolute beginning would be one that is with- 
out a preceding moment. But since time admits of no 
limits, this is inconceivable. Consequently this possibil- 
ity of conceiving the necessary being at the beginning of 
the world falls. The other possibility, namely, that the 
necessary being constitutes and is constituted by the 
whole series of phenomena is no better. For no summa- 
tion of relative and contingent phenomena will ever be 
an absolute and necessary being. The conclusion is then 
that there is no necessary being in the world. But may 
such necessary being be beyond the world? If it is, it 
exists outside time and space. But it is supposed to be 



192 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

the source and beginning of things, and as all beginning 
is in a moment of time, this relation is also impossible, 
for by hypothesis it is outside of time. 

Kant, in his solution of the antinomies, distinguishes 
between the first two, or mathematical, antinomies, and 
the third and fourth, or dynamical antinomies. The 
mathematical antinomies, by reason of their dealing 
with the composition and division of quantitative mag- 
nitudes, are stated so that the conditions and the condi- 
tioned are homogeneous, whereas in the dynamical 
antinomies, condition and conditioned need not be and 
are not homogeneous. 

In the mathematical antinomies the thesis and an- 
tithesis are both false because they both rest on the false 
assumption that the world, as a body of phenomena 
which is complete, is given; whereas, as a matter of fact, 
the totality is merely demanded by reason, but can not 
be given in experience. Our knowledge does not give us 
the world in itself, but merely an incomplete phenomenal 
representation based upon an empirical regress which 
can never be completed. Consequently we are not 
justified in saying that the world as a whole is either 
finite or infinite, or, that either it is composed of simple 
parts, or is infinitely divisible. 

In the dynamical antinomies we face a different 
situation, namely, that both thesis and antithesis in each 
antinomy may be true. For the thesis may be true if it 
refers to things in themselves, while the antithesis may 
be true if it refers to phenomena. Taking the antithesis 
first, we can say that in the world of nature, that is, 
phenomena, there is no break in the causal series, and 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 93 

no necessity or place for either a free cause or a necessary 
being. There is now no conflict if we say that on the 
other hand in the world of things in themselves, beyond 
the world of sense, there may be that free, necessary cause, 
which the reason demands as ground of the phenomenal 
regress. In this way, Kant believes, the way is opened 
for faith, for, had such a solution of these antinomies 
been impossible, either experiential knowledge on the one 
side, or the basis of ethics and religion on the other, 
would have been impossible. 

Kant believes that the third of the antinomies seems 
particularly significant on this account, for in its solution 
one can point out that the antithesis does at least not 
disprove the possibility of the thesis. In other words, 
that while the possibility of freedom can not be proved, 
yet it can be proved that freedom is not impossible. 

The law of nature, that everything which happens has 
a cause, — that the causality of that cause, that is, its 
activity (as it is anterior in time, and, with regard to an 
effect which has arisen, can not itself have always 
existed, but must have happened at some time), must 
have its cause among the phenomena by which it is 
determined, and that therefore all events in the order 
of nature are empirically determined. This law, through 
which alone phenomena become nature and objects of 
experience, is a law of the understanding, which can on 
no account be surrendered, and from which no single 
phenomenon can be exempted; because in doing this 
we should place it outside all possible experience, sep- 
arate from all objects of possible experience, and change 
it into a mere fiction of the mind or a cobweb of the brain. 



194 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

We require the principle of the causality of phenomena 
among themselves, in order to be able to look for and 
to produce natural conditions, that is, phenomenal causes 
of natural events. If this is admitted and not weakened 
by any exceptions, the understanding, which in its 
empirical employment recognizes in all events nothing 
but nature, and is quite justified in doing so, has really 
all that it can demand, and the explanations of phys- 
ical phenomena may proceed without let or hindrance. 
The understanding would not be wronged in the least, 
if we assumed, though it be a mere fiction, that some 
among the natural causes have a faculty which is in- 
telligible only, and whose determination to activity does 
not rest on empirical conditions, but on mere grounds 
of the intellect, if only the phenomenal activity of that 
cause is in accordance with all the laws of empirical 
causality. 

Our problem is then whether freedom is really contra- 
dictory to natural necessity. 

Man, so far as he is considered as a phenomenal being, 
is subject to the laws of nature, the same as other objects 
of nature. In lifeless or merely animal nature there 
is no ground for taking exception to complete deter- 
mination by natural causes. But man is not merely 
an object, he is a being through the principles of whose 
mind, objects become possible for him. Furthermore, 
the fact of his being the possessor of moral obligation 
shows that his nature includes more than the merely 
theoretical principles of phenomenal possibility, and 
that he has also noumenal significance. The ought 
expresses a kind of necessity and connection with causes, 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 95 

which we do not find elsewhere in the whole of nature. 
The understanding can know in nature only what is 
present, past, or future. If we look at the course of 
nature as a causally connected whole, the ought has no 
significance because everything is necessarily determined 
by mechanical causation. 

A man's actions as empirical phenomena are necessarily 
determined as such. But if we consider the same actions 
with reference to reason, not speculative reason, but the 
practical reason, it is conceivable that there may be a 
rule and order entirely different from the order of nature. 
And we may find that the ideas of reason have really 
proved their causality with reference to human actions 
as phenomena, and that these actions have taken place, 
not because they were determined by empirical causes, 
but by the causes of reason. The causality of reason 
in its intelligible character does not arise or begin at a 
certain time in order to produce an effect; for in that case 
it would be subject to the natural law of phenomena, 
and its causality would be nature and not freedom. 
What we could say is that reason is a faculty through 
which the sensuous condition of an empirical series first 
begins. For the condition that lies in reason would not 
be sensuous and therefore would itself not begin. Thus 
we would get what we missed in all empirical series, 
namely, that the condition of a successive series of 
events should itself be empirically unconditioned. 

Reason would be the constant condition of all free 
actions by which man takes his place in the phenomenal 
world. Every one of them would be determined before- 
hand in his empirical character, before it becomes actual. 



196 INTRODUCTION TO KANT's CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

With regard to the intelligible character, however, of 
which the empirical is only a sensuous schema, there 
would be neither before nor after; and every action, 
without regard to the temporal relation which connects 
it with other phenomena, would be the immediate effect 
of the intelligible character of pure reason. 

While the preceding argument does not prove the 
existence of a causality of freedom, it shows us that free- 
dom is not necessarily precluded by natural causality. 
Kant has constantly insisted that natural causality 
holds good of phenomena only, and not of things in 
themselves. Therefore, if considerations of a moral or 
religious character furnish practical reasons for belief in 
freedom, rational faith finds no valid grounds militating 
against such belief. To change the natural course of 
events in accord with moral ideals, is the imperative 
which Kant finds present in us all. It is man's duty to 
rise superior to natural impulses, and so overcome 
natural necessity. But an ought implies that the action is 
possible and this in turn implies freedom. An adequate 
treatment of this problem is not attempted here where the 
sole purpose is to show that freedom is not unthinkable. 
In this manner, Kant has prepared the way for his doc- 
trine of morals. 

The Ideal oe Pure Reason 

In the analytic the problem was to find pure concepts 
of the understanding whereby the material of phenom- 
enal knowledge could be unified and such knowledge 
made possible. In the dialectic the problem has been to 
find a unity of the categories in terms of ideas of reason. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 197 

These ideas contain a certain completeness unattainable 
in any possible empirical knowledge, and reason aims in 
them at a systematical unity only, to which the empir- 
ically possible unity is to approximate, without ever 
fully reaching it. Still further removed from objective 
reality is what Kant calls the Ideal, by which he means 
the idea, not only in concrete, but in individuo, that is, an 
individual thing determinable or even determined by 
the idea alone. What is to us an ideal, was in Plato's 
language an Idea of a divine mind, an individual object 
present to its pure intuition, the most perfect of every 
kind of possible being, and the archetype of all phenom- 
enal copies. These ideals, though they cannot claim ob- 
jective reality (existence), are not therefore to be con- 
sidered as mere chimeras, but supply reason with an 
indispensable standard, because it requires the concept 
of that which is perfect of its kind, in order to estimate 
and measure by it the degree and the number of the 
defects in the imperfect. In its ideal, reason aims at a 
perfect determination, according to rules a priori, and it 
conceives an object throughout determinable according 
to principles, though without sufficient conditions of 
experience, so that the concept itself is transcendent. 
Such an ideal, in short, is the idea of God. 

The ideas of reason have been found in the dialectic 
to lead to a series of illusory syllogisms — in the ra- 
tional psychology, a categorical syllogism; in the rational 
cosmology, an hypothetical syllogism, and in the rational 
theology, a disjunctive syllogism. The way in which 
the relation of the rational theology to the disjunctive 
syllogism is worked out, will appear in what follows. 



198 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

Everything is subject, in its possibility, to the principle 
of complete determination, according to which one of all 
the possible predicates of things, as compared with their 
opposites, must be applicable to it. This does not rest 
only on the principle of contradiction, for it regards every- 
thing, not only in relation to two contradictory pred- 
icates, but in relation to the whole possibility, that is, 
to the whole of all predicates of things, and, presupposing 
these as a condition a priori, it represents everything 
as deriving its own possibility from the share which it 
possesses in that whole possibility. This principle of 
complete determination relates therefore to the content, 
and not only to the logical form. It is the principle of 
the synthesis of all predicates which are meant to form 
the complete concept of a thing, and not the principle of 
analytical representation only, by means of one of two 
contradictory predicates; and it contains a transcendental 
presupposition, namely, that of the material for all 
possibility which is supposed to contain a priori the data 
for the particular possibility of everything. 

Now although this idea of the sum total of all possibility, 
so far as it forms the condition of the complete deter- 
mination of everything, is itself still undetermined with 
regard to its predicates, and is conceived by us merely 
as a sum total of all possible predicates, we find never- 
theless on closer examination that this idea, as a funda- 
mental concept, excludes a number of predicates which, 
being derivative, are given by others, or can not stand 
one by the side of the other, and that it is raised to a 
completely a priori determined concept, thus becoming 
the concept of an individual object which is completely 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 1 99 

determined by the mere idea, and must therefore be 
called an ideal of pure reason. 

By this complete possession of all reality we represent 
the concept of a thing in itself as completely determined, 
and the concept of an ens realissimum is the concept of 
individual being, because of all possible opposite pred- 
icates one, namely, that which absolutely belongs to 
being, is found in its determination. It is therefore a 
transcendental ideal which forms the foundation of the 
complete determination which is necessary for all that 
exists, and which constitutes at the same time the 
highest and complete condition of its possibility, to which 
all thought of objects, with regard to their content,, 
must be traced back. It is at the same time the only 
true ideal of which human reason is capable, because it 
is in this case alone that a concept of a thing, which in 
itself is general, is completely determined by itself, and 
recognized as the representation of an individual. 

The logical determination of a concept by reason is 
based upon a disjunctive syllogism in which the major 
contains a logical division (the division of the sphere of a 
general concept), while the minor limits that sphere to a 
certain part, and the conclusion determines the concept 
by that part. The general concept of a reality in general 
can not be divided a priori, because without experience 
we know no definite kinds of reality contained under that 
genus. Hence the transcendental major of the complete 
determination of all things is nothing but a representation 
of the sum total of all reality, and not only a concept 
which comprehends all predicates, according to their 
transcendental content, under itself, but within itself; 



200 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

and the complete determination of everything depends 
on the limitation of this total of reality, of which some 
part is ascribed to the thing, while the rest is excluded 
from it, a procedure which agrees with the aut aut of a 
disjunctive major, and with the determination of the 
object through one of the members of that division in 
the minor. Thus the procedure of reason by which the 
transcendental ideal becomes the basis of the determina- 
tion of all possible things, is analogous to that which 
reason follows in disjunctive syllogisms, a proposition 
on which I tried to base the systematical division of all 
transcendental ideas, and according to which they are 
produced, as corresponding to the three kinds of the 
syllogisms of reason. 

The derivation of all other possibility from that 
original being can not, if we speak accurately, be con- 
sidered as a limitation of its highest reality, and, as it 
were, a division of it — for in that case the original being 
would become to us a mere aggregate of derivative beings, 
which is impossible, though we represented it so in our 
first rough sketch. On the contrary, the highest reality 
would form the basis of the possibility of all things as a 
cause, and not as a sum total. The manifoldness of things 
would not depend on the limitation of the original being, 
but on its complete effect, and to this also would belong 
all our sensibility, together with all reality in phenomenal 
appearance, which could not, as an ingredient, belong 
to the idea of a supreme being. 

If we follow up this idea of ours and hypostasize it, 
we shall be able to determine the original being by means 
of the concept of the highest reality as one, simple, all- 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 201 

sufficient, eternal, etc., in one word, determine it in its 
unconditioned completeness through all predicaments. 
The concept of such a being is the concept of God in its 
transcendental sense, and thus, as Kant indicated above, 
the ideal of pure reason is the object of a transcendental 
theology. 

CRITICISM OF THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF FOR THE 
EXISTENCE OF GOD 

The concept of an absolutely necessary being is a con- 
cept of pure reason, that is, a mere idea, the objective 
reality of which is not proved by the fact that it is re- 
quired by reason. That idea does no more than point 
to a certain but unattainable completeness, and serves 
rather to limit the understanding, than to extend its 
sphere. 

People, in all their talk concerning an absolutely nec- 
essary being, have tried not so much to understand 
whether and how a thing of that kind could even be 
conceived, as to prove its existence. It has not been 
made clear why the non-existence of such a being is 
inconceivable, and we are not sure whether any object 
corresponds to the concept unconditioned. Furthermore, 
the examples used to explain the concept have been taken 
from judgments only, not from things, and their exist- 
ence. Now the unconditioned necessity of judgments is 
not the same thing as an absolute necessity of things. 
The proposition that a triangle has three angles, does 
not say that these angles exist, but only that if the tri- 
angle exists, it must have three angles. Nevertheless, 
this pure logical necessity has exerted so powerful an 



202 

illusion, that, after having formed of a thing a concept 
a priori so constituted that it seemed to include existence 
in its sphere, people thought they could conclude with 
certainty that, because existence necessarily belongs to 
the object of that concept, provided always that I accept 
the thing as given, its existence also must necessarily 
be accepted, and that the being therefore must itself be 
absolutely necessary, because its existence is implied in a 
concept, which is accepted voluntarily only, and always 
under the condition that I accept the object of it as given. 

If in an identical judgment the predicate is rejected 
and the subject retained, there arises a contradiction. 
But if both subject and predicate are rejected, there is no 
contradiction. To accept a triangle and yet to reject its 
three angles is contradictory, but there is no contradic- 
tion in admitting the non-existence of the triangle and 
of its three angles. The same applies to the concept of 
an absolutely necessary being. Remove its existence, 
and you remove the thing itself with all its predicates, 
so that a contradiction becomes impossible. If you say, 
God is almighty, that is a necessary judgment, because 
almightiness can not be removed, if you accept a deity. 
But if you say, God is not, then neither his almightiness, 
nor any other of his predicates is given; they are all, 
together with the subject, removed out of existence, and 
there is no contradiction. 

The only way of evading the above conclusion would 
be to say that there are subjects which can not be re- 
moved. But this would be to assert the existence of 
absolutely necessary subjects, and that is the very thing 
to be proved. Kant holds it impossible to form any con- 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 203 

cept of a thing which if removed together with its pred- 
icates will involve any contradiction. Despite all these 
arguments, however, it is asserted that there is one and 
only one concept in which the removal of its object 
would be self-contradictory, namely, the concept of the 
most real being. It is said that it possesses all reality, 
and one is no doubt justified in accepting such a being 
as possible* Now reality comprehends existence, and 
therefore existence is contained in the concept of a 
thing possible. If that thing is removed, the internal 
possibility of the thing would be removed, and this is 
self-contradictory. 

Kant, on the other hand, asserts that by introducing 
into the concept of a thing, which you wish to think in its 
possibility only, the concept of existence, you have been 
guilty of a fallacy. You can draw out no more than 
you have yourself included in the concept, and this is 
mere tautology. All judgments concerning existence are 
synthetical propositions; hence we can not demonstrate 
the existence of God from the concept of God. 

Existence is not a real predicate, or a concept of some- 
thing that can be added to the concept of a thing. It is 
merely the admission of a thing, and of certain determina- 

* But Kant warns us that the absence of self-contradictoriness 
in a concept is far from proving the possibility of its object. A 
concept is always possible, if it is not self-contradictory. But it 
may nevertheless be an empty concept, unless the objective reality 
of the synthesis, by which the concept is generated, has been dis- 
tinctly shown. This, however, must rest upon principles of pos- 
sible experience, and not on the principle of contradiction. This 
is a warning against inferring at once from the logical possibility 
the possibility of real things. 



204 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

tions in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judg- 
ment. The proposition, God is almighty, contains two 
concepts, each having its object, namely, God and 
almightiness. The small word is, is not an additional 
predicate, but only serves to put the predicate in relation 
to the subject. If, then, I take the subject God with all 
its predicates, and say, God is, or there is a God, I add no 
predicate to the concept of God, but only put the subject 
with all its predicates, in relation to my concept, as its 
object. Both must contain exactly the same kind of 
thing, and nothing can have been added to the concept, 
which expresses possibility only, by my thinking its 
object as simply given and saying, it is. And thus the 
real does not contain more than the possible. A hundred 
real dollars do not contain a penny more than a hundred 
possible dollars. 

If, then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest 
reality (without any defect), the question still remains, 
whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there 
may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a 
thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to 
my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge 
of that object should be possible a posteriori also, and 
here we perceive the cause of our difficulty. 

Kant's criticism of the ontological argument calls 
attention to two fallacies, i. Mere absence of contra- 
diction proves no more than the logical possibility of a 
concept; it does not establish the real possibility of a 
thing. 2. It is impossible to derive the existence of a 
thing by analysis of a concept; all existential judgments 
are synthetical. Existence is not something included in 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 205 

the concept of a thing, the existence of a thing can not 
be determined without experience.* 

CRITICISM OF THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF FOR THE 
EXISTENCE OF GOD 

The cosmological proof, which Leibniz calls also the 
proof a contingentia mundi, runs as follows: If there 
exists anything, there must exist an absolutely necessary 
being also. Now I, at least, exist; therefore there exists 
an absolutely necessary being. This proof begins with 
experience, and is not entirely a priori, or ontological; 
and, as the object of all possible experience is called the 
world, this proof is called the cosmological proof. The 
proof then goes on as follows: The necessary being can 
be determined in one way only, that is, by one only of all 
possible opposite predicates; it must therefore be deter- 
mined completely by its own concept. Now, there is 
only one concept of a thing possible, which a priori com- 
pletely determines it, namely, that of the ens realissimum. 
It follows, therefore, that the concept of the ens realis- 
simum is the only one by which a necessary being can 
be thought, and therefore it is concluded that a highest 
being exists by necessity. 

There are so many sophistical propositions in this 
cosmological argument, that it really seems as if spec- 
ulative reason had spent all her dialectical skill in order 
to produce the greatest possible transcendental illusion. 
We see that there is here put forward an old argument 
disguised as a new one, in order to appeal to the agree- 

* The entire question of the validity of Kant's criticism of this 
argument hinges on the relation between thought and reality. 



206 

ment of two witnesses, one supplied by pure reason, the 
other by experience, while in reality there is only one, 
namely, the first, who changes his dress and voice in 
order to be taken for a second. In order to have a secure 
foundation, this proof takes its stand on experience, and 
pretends to be different from the ontological proof, 
which places its whole confidence in pure concepts 
a priori only. The cosmological proof, however, uses 
that experience only in order to make one step, namely, 
to the existence of a necessary being in general. What 
properties that being may have, can never be learnt from 
the empirical argument, and for that purpose reason 
takes leave of it altogether, and tries to find out, from 
among concepts only, what properties an absolutely 
necessary being ought to possess, that is, which among 
all possible things contains in itself the requisite condi- 
tions of absolute necessity. This requisite is believed by 
reason to exist in the concept of an ens realissimum only, 
and reason concludes at once that this must be the 
absolutely necessary being. In this conclusion it is 
simply assumed that the concept of a being of the highest 
reality is perfectly adequate to the concept of absolute 
necessity in existence; so that the latter might be con- 
cluded from the former. This is the same proposition 
as that maintained in the ontological argument, and is 
simply taken over into the cosmological proof, nay, made 
its foundation, although the intention was to avoid it. 
For it is clear that absolute necessity is an existence 
from mere concepts. If, then, I say that the concept of 
the ens realissimum is such a concept, and is the only 
concept adequate to necessary existence, I am bound to 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 207 

admit that the latter may be deduced from the former. 
The whole conclusive strength of the so-called cosmo- 
logical proof rests therefore in reality on the ontological 
proof from mere concepts, while the appeal to experience 
is quite superfluous, and, though it may lead us on to the 
concept of absolute necessity, it cannot demonstrate it 
with any definite object. 

Another of the sophisms of the cosmological argument 
may now be shown. If the proposition is right, that every 
absolutely necessary being is, at the same time, the most 
real being (and this is the nervus probandi of the cosmo- 
logical proof), it must like all affirmative judgments, be 
capable of conversion, at least per accidens. This would 
give us the proposition that some entia realissima are at 
the same time absolutely necessary beings. One ens 
realissimum, however, does not differ from any other on 
any point, and what applies to one, applies also to all. 
In this case, therefore, I may employ absolute conversion, 
and say, that every ens realissimum is a necessary being. 
As this proposition is determined by its concepts a priori 
only, it follows that the mere concept of the ens realis- 
simum must carry with it its absolute necessity; and this, 
which was maintained by the ontological proof, and not 
recognized by the cosmological, forms really the founda- 
tion of the conclusions of the latter, though in a dis- 
guised form. 

It may be allowable to admit the existence of a being 
entirely sufficient to serve as the cause of all possible 
effects, simply in order to assist reason in her search for 
unity of causes. But to go so far as to say that such a 
being exists necessarily, is no longer the modest language 



208 INTRODUCTION TO KANT's CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

of an admissible hypothesis, but the bold assurance of 
apodictic certainty; for the knowledge of that which is 
absolutely necessary must itself possess absolute neces- 
sity. 

The whole problem of the transcendental ideal is this, 
either to find a concept compatible with absolute neces- 
sity, or to find the absolute necessity compatible with 
the concept of anything. If the one is possible, the other 
must be so also, for reason recognizes that only as ab- 
solutely necessary which is necessary according to its 
concept. Both these tasks bafBe our attempts at satisfy- 
ing our understanding on this point, and likewise our 
endeavors to comfort it with regard to its impotence. 

CRITICISM OF THE PHYSICO-THEOLOGICAL PROOF FOR 
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 

If, then, neither the concept of things in general, nor 
the experience of any existence in general, can satisfy our 
demands, there still remains one way open, namely, to 
try whether any definite experience, and consequently 
that of things in the world as it is, their constitution and 
disposition, may not supply a proof which could give us 
the certain conviction of the existence of a supreme being. 
Such a proof we should call physico-theological. If that, 
however, should prove impossible too, then it is clear that 
no satisfactory proof whatever, from merely speculative 
reason, is possible, in support of the existence of a being, 
corresponding to our transcendental idea. 

This proof will always deserve to be treated with re- 
spect. It is the oldest, the clearest, and most in conform- 
ity with human reason. Its principal points are the 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 209 

following. First, there are everywhere in the world clear 
indications of an intentional arrangement carried out 
with great wisdom, and forming a whole indescribably 
varied in its contents and infinite in extent. Secondly, 
the fitness of this arrangement is entirely foreign to the 
things existing in the world, and belongs to them con- 
tingently only; that is, the nature of different things 
could never spontaneously, by the combination of so 
many means, co-operate towards definite aims, if these 
means had not been selected and arranged on purpose 
by a rational disposing principle, according to certain 
fundamental ideas. Thirdly, there exists, therefore, a 
sublime and wise cause (or many), which must be the 
cause of the world, not only as a blind and all-powerful 
nature, by means of unconscious fecundity, but as an 
intelligence, by freedom. Fourthly, the unity of that 
cause may be inferred with certainty from the unity of 
the reciprocal relation of the parts of the world, as por- 
tions of a skillful edifice, so far as our experience reaches, 
and beyond it, with plausibility, according to the prin- 
ciples of analogy. 

According to this argument, the fitness and harmony 
existing in so many works of nature might prove the con- 
tingency of the form, but not of the matter, that is, the 
substance of the world, because, for the latter purpose, 
it would be necessary to prove in addition, that the things 
of the world were in themselves incapable of such order 
and harmony, according to general laws, unless there 
existed, even in their substance, the product of a supreme 
wisdom. For this purpose, very different arguments 
would be required from those derived from the analogy 



210 INTRODUCTION TO KANTS CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

of human art. The utmost, therefore, that could be 
established by such a proof would be an architect of the 
world, always very much hampered by the quality of the 
material with which he has to work, not a creator, to 
whose idea everything is subject. This would by no 
means suffice for the purposed aim of proving an all- 
sufficient original being. If we wish to prove the con- 
tingency of matter itself, we must have recourse to a 
transcendental argument, and this is the very thing 
which was to be avoided. 

The step leading to absolute totality is entirely im- 
possible on the empirical road. Nevertheless, that step 
is taken in the physico-theological proof. How then has 
this broad abyss been bridged over? 

The fact is that, after having reached the stage of 
admiration of the greatness, the wisdom, the power, etc., 
of the Author of the world, and seeing no further ad- 
vance possible, one suddenly leaves the argument carried 
on by empirical proofs, and lays hold of that contingency 
which, from the very first, was inferred from the order 
and design of the world. The next step from that con- 
tingency leads, by means of transcendental concepts 
only, to the existence of something absolutely necessary, 
and another step from the absolute necessity of the first 
cause to its completely determined or determining con- 
cept, namely, that of an all-embracing reality. Thus we 
see that the physico-theological proof, baffled in its own 
undertaking, takes suddenly refuge in the cosmological 
proof, and as this is only the ontological proof in disguise, 
it really carries out its original intention by means of 
pure reason only; though it so strongly disclaimed in the 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 211 

beginning all connection with it, and professed to base 
everything on clear proofs from experience. 

Those who adopt the physico-theological argument 
have no reason to be so very coy towards the transcenden- 
tal mode of argument, and with the conceit of enlightened 
observers of nature to look down upon it as the cob- 
webs of dark speculators. If they would only examine 
themselves, they would find that, after they had ad- 
vanced a good way on the soil of nature and experience, 
and found themselves nevertheless as far removed as 
ever from the object revealed to their reason, they 
suddenly leave that soil, to enter into the realm of pure 
possibilities, where on the wings of ideas they hope to 
reach that which had withdrawn itself from all their 
empirical investigations. Imagining themselves to be 
on firm ground after that desperate leap, they now pro- 
ceed to expand the definite concept which they have 
acquired, they do not know how, over the whole field 
of creation; and they explain the ideal, which was merely 
a product of pure reason, by experience, though in a very 
poor way, and totally beneath the dignity of the object, 
refusing all the while to admit that they have arrived 
at that knowledge or supposition by a very different 
road from that of experience. 

Thus we have seen that the physico-theological proof 
rests on the cosmological, and the cosmological on the 
ontological proof of the existence of one original being 
as the supreme being; and, as besides these three, there 
is no other path open to speculative reason, the ontolog- 
ical proof, based exclusively on pure concepts of reason, 
is the only possible one, always supposing that any proof 



212 INTRODUCTION TO KANT S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

of a proposition, so far transcending the empirical use of 
the understanding, is possible at all. 

THE REGULATIVE USE OF THE IDEAS 

The dialectic, Kant thinks, confirms the view that all 
attempts to pass beyond the limits of possible experience 
are vain and lead to nothing but error. Furthermore, it 
has shown that reason has a natural inclination to over- 
step these limits, and that transcendental ideas are as 
natural to it as categories to the understanding. 

Despite their tendency to lead us into illusion, the 
ideas of reason have a use which depends upon the rela- 
tion between reason and understanding. Reason seems 
to be related to understanding in much the same way as 
understanding is related to sensibility. It is the proper 
business of reason to render the unity of all possible 
empirical acts of the understanding systematical, in 
the same manner as the understanding connects the 
manifold of phenomena by concepts, and brings it under 
empirical laws. Thus the ideas of reason furnish a rule 
or principle for the systematical unity of the whole use 
of the understanding. But this rule or principle does not 
of itself determine anything, it merely indicates the pro- 
cedure by which the empirical and definite use of the 
understanding may remain in harmony with itself. 

Kant holds that the ideas of reason ought never to be 
employed as constitutive principles. Reason never refers 
immediately to an object, but to the understanding only, 
and through it to its own empirical use. Therefore, it 
does not form, concepts of objects, but arranges them 
only, and imparts to them that unity which they can have 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 213 

in their greatest possible extension, that is, with reference 
to the totality of different series; while the understanding 
does not concern itself with this totality, but only with 
that connection through which such series of conditions 
become possible according to concepts. Reason has 
therefore for its object the understanding only and the 
fittest employment of that understanding; and as the 
understanding brings unity into the manifold of the 
objects by means of concepts, reason brings unity into 
the manifold of concepts by means of ideas, making a 
certain collective unity the aim of the operations of the 
understanding, which otherwise is occupied with dis- 
tributive unity only. 

From what has been said it will appear that the ideas 
though not constitutive have a most admirable and in- 
dispensably necessary regulative use in directing the 
understanding to a certain aim. If we review the entire 
extent of our knowledge supplied by the understanding, 
we shall find that it is the systematizing of that knowledge, 
that is, its coherence according to one principle, which 
forms the proper province of reason. This unity of rea- 
son always presupposes an idea, namely, that of the form 
of a whole of our knowledge, preceding the definite knowl- 
edge of its parts, and containing the conditions according 
to which we are to determine a priori the place of every 
part and its relation to the rest. Such an idea, accord- 
ingly, demands the complete unity of the knowledge of 
our understanding, by which that knowledge becomes not 
a mere aggregate but a system, connected according to 
necessary laws. Such concepts of reason are not derived 
from nature, but we only interrogate nature, according to 



214 

these ideas, and consider our knowledge defective so long 
as it is not adequate to them. This use is only hypothet- 
ical or regulative because the general idea is merely 
assumed and never really given or reached. The matter 
will become clearer if we consider the different ways in 
which this idea appears. 

i. In all our investigations we seek for unity back of 
the differences. In all fields, reason compels us to seek 
for some concept capable of explaining the difference 
between things and the multiplicity of their changes. 
The logical principle of genera presupposes a transcenden- 
tal principle in order that the former may be applied to 
nature. According to it, in the manifoldness of a pos- 
sible experience, some homogeneousness is necessarily 
supposed, because without it, no empirical concepts, and 
consequently no experience, would be possible. 

2. The logical principle of generalization is balanced 
by another principle, namely, that of species, which 
requires manifoldness and diversity in things, in spite 
of the fact that they belong to the same genus. This 
principle depending on the faculty of distinction, checks 
the generalizing flights of fancy which have a tendency 
to overlook the differences between things. The trans- 
cendental principle of specification is not constitutive 
but is merely regulative. It does not involve an actual 
infinity of difference in the objects of our knowledge; 
it simply prescribes a task to the understanding. As 
the principle of homogeneity prompts us to look for 
uniformity, so the principle of specification prompts us 
to note differences. 

3. The principle of continuity counsels us to avoid 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 215 

all violent leaps either in generalization or in specification. 
This again is only a regulative principle. 

The first law keeps us from admitting an extrava- 
gant variety of different original genera, and recom- 
mends attention to homogeneousness. The second, on 
the contrary, checks that tendency to unity, and pre- 
scribes distinction of sub-species before applying any gen- 
eral concept to individuals. The third unites both, by 
prescribing, even with the utmost variety, homogeneous- 
ness, through the gradual transition from one species to 
another: thus indicating a kind of relationship of the 
different branches, as all having sprung from the same 
stem. 

These principles can not be realized in experience but 
they are necessary, organizing factors, since without an 
effort to realize them no experience could exist. Hence 
they must be considered as regulative only, and if they 
are referred to objects, we must remember that such 
objects are ideal not real. 

Reason, by means of its ideas, has been supposed to be 
able to deal with the soul, the world, and God, as objects. 
The futility of any such procedure has already been 
shown. We can not determine any real object by means 
of the transcendental ideas. But this does not prove that 
these ideas and their ideal objects are without value. 
True, we can not determine the soul as a unity, but still 
it is necessary to connect all the phenomena, all the 
actions and feelings, presented to us in inner experience, 
as if the soul were a simple substance. In doing this, the 
object is merely to find principles of systematical unity 
for the explanation of the phenomena of the soul. Noth- 



2l6 

ing but good can spring from such an idea, used in this 
way, provided we do not take it for more than an idea. 
It is impossible for us to determine the world of expe- 
rience as an infinite totality; but we nevertheless find it 
necessary, in order to explain the phenomena of expe- 
rience, to pass from event to event as if all belonged to an 
infinite series. We have no ground for asserting a perfect 
God, but reason requires us to consider all connection in 
the world according to the principles of a systematical 
unity, and, therefore, as if the whole of it had sprung from 
a single all-embracing being, as its highest and all- 
sufficient cause. But we must remember that in all these 
cases reason can have no object except its own formal 
rule in the extension of its empirical use. It can not 
legitimately aim at extension beyond all limits of em- 
pirical application. 

The highest formal unity, which is based on concepts 
of reason alone, is the unity of purpose; and the specula- 
tive interest of reason forces us to regard the order in the 
world as being designed by God. This principle opens 
new views to reason and invites it to unite all things 
according to teleological laws. The admission of God 
as the only cause of the universe, if used merely as a 
regulative principle can produce nothing but good. If, 
however, we look upon this idea as constitutive we com- 
mit serious errors. Thus we may indolently cease looking 
for natural causes and refer everything directly to the 
will of God. Or again, we may determine God an- 
thropomorphically and then suppose His aims as dic- 
ta tonally and violently imposed on nature. In this way 
we avoid the labor of looking for explanations by means 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 21 7 

of natural causes. To mistake the regulative principle 
of the unity of nature for a constitutive principle, and 
thus to use it in this manner, is simply to confound 
reason. 

Kant puts the general discussion concerning God and 
the world in a concrete form, near the end of the Dialec- 
tic, by means of questions and answers. 

If it be asked, Whether there is something different 
from the world, containing the ground of the order of the 
world and of its connection according to general laws? 
The answer is: certainly there is. For the world is a sum 
of phenomena, and there must, therefore, be some 
transcendental ground of it, that is, a ground to be 
thought by the pure understanding only. If it is asked, 
Whether that being is a substance of the greatest reality, 
necessary, etc.? The answer is, that such a question has no 
meaning. For the categories have no meaning unless they 
are applied to the world of sense. Outside that field 
they are mere titles of concepts, which we may admit, 
but by which we can understand nothing. If the ques- 
tion is asked, Whether we may not at least conceive this 
being, which is different from the world, in analogy with 
the objects of experience? Our answer is, certainly we 
may, but only as an object in the idea and not in the 
reality, that is, in so far only as it remains a substratum, 
unknown to us, of the systematic unity, order, and design 
of the world, which reason is obliged to adopt as a regula- 
tive principle in the investigation of nature. It was not 
intended that by it we should try to form a conception 
of what that original cause of the unity of the world may 
be by itself; it was only meant to teach us how to use it, 



2l8 INTRODUCTION TO KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

or rather its idea, with reference to the systematical use 
of reason, applied to the things of the world. 

But, surely, people will proceed to ask, We may, 
according to this, admit a wise and omnipotent Author 
of the world? Certainly, we answer, not only we may, but 
we must. Do not we thus extend our knowledge beyond 
the field of possible experience? By no means. For we 
have only presupposed a something of which we have no 
conception whatever as to what it is in itself. We have 
only, with reference to the systematical and well-designed 
order of the world, which we must presuppose, if we are 
to study nature at all, presented to ourselves that un- 
known being in analogy with what is an empirical con- 
cept, namely, an intelligence; that is, we have, with 
reference to the purposes and the perfection which 
depend upon it, attributed to it those very qualities on 
which, according to the conditions of our reason, such 
a systematical unity may depend. That idea, therefore, 
is entirely founded on the employment of our reason in the 
world, and if we were to attribute to it absolute and 
objective validity, we should be forgetting that it is only 
a being in the idea which we think: and as we should 
then be taking our start from a cause, that can not be 
determined by mundane considerations, we should no 
longer be able to employ that principle in accordance 
with the empirical use of reason. 

If, finally, it is asked, May we not use the concept of 
a supreme being in our investigations of nature? The 
answer is, we may and should because that is the purpose 
of the idea. But in considering natural things as due to 
the design of a supreme being one should never forget 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 2IQ 

that the idea is merely regulative. We are using analogies 
only and must beware of taking them for things in them- 
selves.* 

Thus we find that pure reason, which at first seemed to 
promise nothing less than extension of our knowledge 
beyond all limits of experience, contains, if properly 
understood, nothing but regulative principles, which 
indeed postulate greater unity than the empirical use 
of the understanding can ever achieve. But these 
principles, by the very fact that they place the goal 
which has to be reached at so great a distance, carry the 
agreement of the understanding with itself by means of 
systematical unity to the highest possible degree; while, 
if they are misunderstood and mistaken for constitutive 
principles of transcendent knowledge, they produce, by a 
brilliant but deceptive illusion constant contradictions 
and disputes. 

Thus all human knowledge begins with intuitions, ad- 
vances to concepts, and ends with ideas. Although with 
reference to each of these three elements, it possesses 
a priori sources of knowledge, which at first sight seem 
to despise the limits of all experience, criticism soon 

* From Kant's note in reference to the psychological idea, it is 
easy to see how he would have treated the concept of self. It 
would have been pointed out that we are at liberty to use this 
conception in our interpretation of phenomena — as indeed Kant 
himself has done — but we must beware of taking our conception 
of it as anything more than an analogy which is put in place of 
something unknown. This point has an important bearing on the 
interpretation of Kant's philosophy and deserves more considera- 
tion than is usually given to it. Critique of Pure Reason, trans- 
lated by Mueller, p. 558. 



convinces us, that reason, in its speculative use, can never 
get, with these elements, beyond the field of possible 
experience, and that it is the true destination of that 
highest faculty of knowledge to use all methods and 
principles of reason with one object only, namely, to 
follow up nature into her deepest recesses, according to 
every principle of unity, the unity of design being the 
most important, but never to soar above its limits, out- 
side of which there is for us nothing. 



INDEX 



A posteriori, meaning of, 20; judg- 
ments, 20 

A priori, meaning of, 20 f . ; the pure 
a priori, 20; mathematical judg- 
ments, 22 

^Esthetic, transcendental, 26; 
meaning of term, 26; Kant's 
general observations on, 33 ff.; 
authors' observations on, 37 ff. 

Analogies of experience, impor- 
tance of, 106; detailed treatment 
of, 107 ff.; first analogy, 107; 
second analogy, no; third anal- 
ogy, 125 

Analysis, presupposes synthesis, 
50, 64; brings different rep- 
resentations under one concept, 

5i 

Analytic, transcendental, 46; parts 
of, 46; meaning of, 46; meaning 
of analytic of concepts, 47 

Anticipations of perception, 104 f. 

Antinomy of pure reason, 177 ff.; 
first antinomy, 178 ff.; second 
antinomy, 180 ff.; third antin- 
omy, 183 ff.; fourth antinomy, 
186 ff.; solution of the mathe- 
matical antinomies, 192; solution 
of the dynamical antinomies, 
192 f.; summary of, 189 ff.; 
nature of, 149 

Apodictic, meaning of, 29 

Apperception, unity of, 65 ff., 
175 f.; pure apperception, 65; all 



representations must conform to 

it, 66 ff. 
Apprehension, synthesis of, 57 f. 
Aristotle, 52 
Axioms of intuition, 102 f. 

Berkeley, 7 ff. 

Caird, E., 90 note 

Categories, meaning of, 52 f., 71; 
as laws of nature, 85 ff.; table of, 
52 f.; metaphysical deduction 
of, 52 ff.; transcendental deduc- 
tion of, 54 ff.; limits of, 74 ff., 
139; objective validity of, 56; as 
basis of knowledge a priori, 8 2 ff.; 
as grounds of experience, 88 ff.; 
as schematized, 101; categories 
have no meaning unless applied 
to the world of sense, 217; obser- 
vations on the various deduc- 
tions of, 53 f., 62 f., 89 ff. 

Causality, as an ontological prin- 
ciple, 5; as self-evident, 9; 
Hume's analysis of, 12 ff.; the 
category of, 52, 85; its schema, 
101; in the analogies, no ff.; 
observations on Kant's views of, 
120 ff.; of freedom, 183 ff., 193 
ff.; causality of God, 216 ff.; its 
necessity not subjective, 88 f. 

Community, category of, 52; its 
schema, 101; proof of the prin- 
ciple, 125 ff. 



221 



222 



INDEX 



Concept, no knowledge possible 

without it, 6 1 
Conception, its relation to intui- 
tion, 43 f. 
Conscious self as substantial entity, 

30 note, 37 ff., 150 ff., 175 f.; 

Hume's criticism of, 16 
Consciousness, relation to mind, 

37 ff.; of self, 36, 78 ff., 150 ff.; 

its subject-object form, 30 note, 

92 ff. 
Constitutive principles, causality 

a constitutive principle, 16; 

ideas of reason not constitutive, 

212 ff. 
Copernican revolution in Kant's 

philosophy, 19 f. 
Cosmological proof, criticism of, 

205 ff. 

Cosmology, rational, meaning of, 
177; antinomies of, 177; first 
antinomy of, 178 ff.; second an- 
tinomy of, 180 ff.; third antin- 
omy of, 183 ff.; fourth antinomy 
of, 186 ff. 

Creighton, J. E., 19 note, 176 
note. 

Descartes, 1 

Dialectic, its material use of for- 
mal principles, 45; transcen- 
dental dialectic is a critique of 
dialectical semblance, 45 

Dialectical proposition, meaning 
of, 177 

Divine, understanding, 72; mind, 
197 

Empiricism, its conception of the 
nature of knowledge, 3 ff.; 



Kant's philosophy as empiri- 
cism, 136 

Essence, scholastic doctrine of, 2 

Existence, category of, 53; its 
schema, 101 

Experience, all knowledge fur- 
nished by, 3; all knowledge be- 
gins with, 19 f. 

Exposition, meaning of, 27; meta* 
physical exposition of space, 
27 ff.; transcendental exposition 
of space, 29 f.; metaphysical 
exposition of time, 31 f.; tran- 
scendental exposition of time, 32 

Freedom, causality of, 183 ff., 193 
ff.; not incompatible with nat- 
ural causality, 194 ff.; its rela- 
tion to morality, 196 

Function, meaning of, 47 

God, Locke's proof of God's ex- 
istence, 6; as cause in Berkeley's 
system, 8; ontological proof of, 
201 ff.; cosmological proof of, 
205 ff.; as cause of the universe, 
216 ff.; physico-theological proof 
of, 208 ff. 

Hume, David, 9 ff. 

Ideal of pure reason, meaning of, 
149 f., 196 ff. 

Idealism, refutation of, 131 ff. 

Ideas, of sensation and reflection, 
4; innate, 1; transcendental, 144; 
three classes of transcendental, 
145 ; objective deduction not pos- 
sible in case of the transcen- 
dental ideas, 146; transcendental 



INDEX 



223 



ideas unable to determine any 
real object, 215 

Imagination, meaning of, 77 f.; 
transcendental synthesis of, 59 f. 

Immortality, refutation of Men- 
delssohn's proof of, 160; can not 
be proved, 162, 168 f.; practical 
reason renders belief in future 
life possible, 169 

Innate ideas, assumed as self- 
evident by the rationalists, 1; 
Locke's criticism of, 2 f. 

Intuition, Kant's meaning of, 26 
note; relation to conception, 43 
f.; axioms of, 102 f. 

Judgments, of analysis, 21 ff.; of 
synthesis, 21 ff.; as functions of 
unity, 47; table of, 48 ff.; a 
priori, 20; a posteriori, 20; math- 
ematical, 22; function of, 70; 
schematism of, 100; the syn- 
thetical a priori judgments which 
the principles render possible, 
103 ff. 

Knowledge, rationalistic concep- 
tion of, 1 f.; Locke's view of, 3 f.; 
a priori, 20 f.; a posteriori, 20; 
how related to thought, 73 ff., 
154 f.; arises from two funda- 
mental sources, 43; transcen- 
dental, 44 f.; does not extend 
beyond the objects of possible 
experience, 87 

Leibniz, 1, 17 

Locke, 2 ff. 

Logic, meaning of, 44; meaning of 
transcendental logic, 45; uni- 
versal and particular logic, 44 



Material world, assumed by Locke, 

5 

Mathematics, dominant science 
in age of Descartes and Leibniz, 
1; its judgments synthetical, 22; 
how possible, 30 

Matter, dynamical theory of, 
105 

Mendelssohn's proof of the per- 
manence of the soul, refutation 
of, 160 ff. 

Metaphysic, its methods have 
been inadequate, 18 

Metaphysical deduction of the 
categories, 48 ff.; observations 
on the metaphysical deduction, 
53 L 

Metaphysical exposition, mean- 
ing of, 27 

Metaphysical exposition of space, 
27 ff. 

Metaphysical exposition of time, 

31 f. 

Mind, relation to consciousness, 
37 ff.; Locke's view of, 3 f.; 
divine, 197; relation of mind and 
body, 171 f. 

Modality, its categories, 53; ex- 
presses degree of knowledge, 
128; its judgments, 48 

Necessary connection, Hume's view 

of, 13 f. 
Necessity, basis of, 61; its cate- 
gory > 53; its schema, 101; a 
postulate of empirical thought, 
127 
Negation, category of, 52 
Non-existence, category of, 53 
Noumena, 158, 168 note, 173 



224 



INDEX 



Objective deduction of the cate- 
gories, 63 ff.; observations on, 
90 ff. 

Ontological proof, criticism of, 
201 ff.; validity of, 205 note 

Paralogisms of rational psychol- 
ogy, 150 ff.; meaning of, 149, 

151 f. 

Phenomena, meaning of term, 33 
ff., 140; relative independence 
of, 41 f.; selves as, 35 f.; the 
world a sum of phenomena, 217 

Physico-theological proof, criti- 
cism of, 208 ff. 

Plurality, category of, 52 

Possibility, category of, 53; its 
schema, 101; a postulate of em- 
pirical thought, 127 

Postulates of empirical thought, 
127 ff.; observations on, 129 ff. 

Principles of the pure understand- 
ing, 1 01 ff.; observations on, 129 
ff., 135 ff.; mathematical and 
dynamical, 136 

Purpose the highest form of unity, 
216 

Quality, its categories, 52; its 
schema, 101; of judgments, 48 

Quantity, its categories, 52; its 
schema, 101; of judgments, 48 

Rational psychology, paralogisms 
of, 150 ff.; does not prove the 
existence of the self as a sub- 
stance, 154 f.; does not prove 
the simplicity of the self, 155 f.; 
does not prove the personal 
identity of self, 156 f.; the analy- 



sis of consciousness of self gives 
no knowledge of the self as 
object, 157 f.; it furnishes no 
knowledge of the self, 166 f.; 
proves nothing concerning im- 
mortality, 166 ff.; observations 
on, 175 ff. 

Rational theology, criticism of, 
196 ff. 

Rationalism, its ideal of true 
knowledge, 1; relation to math- 
ematics, 1 f. 

Reality, category of, 52; its schema, 
101 

Reason, two meanings of, 142 f.; 
logical employment of, 143; 
paralogisms of, 150 ff.; antin- 
omies of, 177 ff.; ideal of, 196 
ff.; its relation to understand- 
ing, 212 ff.; its speculative use 
confined to possible experience, 
219 ff.; in its speculative use 
unable to prove immortality, 
168 f.; in its practical employ- 
ment reason renders belief in a 
future life possible, 169 

Reciprocity, importance of, 125 f.; 
its category, 52; its schema, 101; 
proof of the principle, 125 ff. 

Recognition, synthesis of, 60 ff. 

Refutation of idealism, 131 ff. 

Regulative principles, ideas of 
reason merely regulative, 212 ff.; 
to mistake them for constitutive 
principles is to confound reason, 
217 

Relation, categories of, 52; schema 
of, 101 ; judgments of, 48 

Representative perception, 5, 8 

Reproduction, synthesis of, 58 ff. 



INDEX 



225 



Schematism of the categories, 100 

f., i35 f- 

Self, as substance in Berkeley's 
philosophy, 9; Hume's treat- 
ment of, 16; as an entity which 
precedes experience, 30 note, 
37 ff.; noumenal conditions of 
self unknown, 62; its numerical 
identity can not be established, 
156 ff.; its immortality can not 
be proved, 162 

Self-consciousness, transcendental 
unity of, 65 ff.; must be possible 
to bring all representations 
under one self-consciousness, 66 
ff.; perfectly empty representa- 
tion, 152, 155; implies connected 
consciousness of objects, 65 ff.; 
89; a logical relation, 175 ff. 

Sensibility, meaning of, 43 ; science 
of, 44 

Seth, Andrew, 17 note, 62 note, 
176 note 

Smith, Norman Kemp, 17 note, 
19 note, 63 note 

Soul, the object of rational psy- 
chology, 150 f. 

Space, the self furnishes the re- 
lations of, 6; Hume's treatment 
of, 11 f.; metaphysical exposition 
of, 27 ff.; transcendental ex- 
position of, 29 f. 

Stephen, Leslie, 17 note 

Subjective deduction of the cate- 
gories, 56 ff. 

Substance, Locke's view of, 4; 
self as substance in Berkeley's 
philosophy, 9; permanence of, 
107 ff.; category of, 52; its 
schema, 101; proof of the prin- 



ciple, 107 ff.; soul as substance, 

151 ff- 
Synthesis, meaning of, 50; result 
of a blind function of the soul, 
50; of apprehension, 57 f.; of re- 
production, 58 ff.; of recognition, 
60 ff.; basis of, 62 f.; not given 
by senses, 64; presupposed by 
analysis, 50, 64 

Thing-in-itself, meaning of, 34 f.; 
no knowledge of, 33 

Time, the self furnishes the rela- 
tions of, 6; Hume's treatment 
of, 11 f.; metaphysical exposi- 
tion of, 31 f.; transcendental 
exposition of, 32 

Totality, category of, 52 

Transcendental deduction, mean- 
ing of, 55; of the categories, 54 
ff.; its relation to empirical de- 
duction, 55; observations on, 
62 f., 89 ff. 

Transcendental exposition, mean- 
ing of, 29 

Transcendental exposition of space, 
29 f. 

Transcendental exposition of time, 
32 f. 

Transcendental ideas, meaning of, 
144; three classes of, 145; ob- 
jective deduction not possible, 
146; as a guide to the under- 
standing, 144; no knowledge of 
objects corresponding to these 
ideas, 148 

Transcendental illusion, meaning 
of, 141, 149, 177 

Transcendental knowledge, mean- 
ing of, 44 f., 77.; does not extend 



226 



INDEX 



beyond the objects of possible 
experience, 87 

Transcendental logic, meaning of, 
26, 45; parts of, 45 

Transcendental philosophy, mean- 
ing of, 24 

Transcendental unity of self- 
consciousness, 65 ff., 174 fL; 
an ideal, 175 ff. 



Unconditioned, different kinds of, 

144 ff. 
Understanding, meaning of, 43 ff., 

67, 142; relation to synthesis, 

64; relation to reason, 212 ff. 
Unity, category of, 52; object of all 

investigation, 214 

Vaihinger, H., 94 note 



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pathy with that philosopher, that it is almost dramatic. No author 
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and simple interpretation of Hegel, free from the uncouth language 
which disfigures most Hegelian commentaries. 

******* 

"Professor Calkins not only criticises, but constructs, and sets 
forth her own doctrine with such ability that she should have a dis- 
tinguished place among contemporary Hegelians|" — From The 
Nation, New York. 

"The historical and critical portions of the volume are written 
with a facile pen. Few recent treatises on philosophy have com- 
bined so constant reference to the sources with so readable an ex- 
pository style. The writer exhibits a comprehensive acquaintance 
with the history of modern thinking, at the same time that she 
exercises independent historical judgment. . . . Unstinted com- 
mendation must be given to the spirit of Miss Calkins's work. 
Never has there been a fairer attempt to solve the difficult problem 
of evolving doctrine from historical analysis." — Professor A. C. 
Armstrong, in The Journal of Philosophy. 

"It is exceptional in lucidity, candor, and the freshness with which 
it surveys well-worn doctrines. More than any Introduction to 
Philosophy with which I am acquainted, it will induce its reader to 
turn to the original sources, and to find pleasure in seeing Philosophy 
as it rises in the minds of the great thinkers. While the book is 
unusually attractive in style, and well fitted for popular use, it is the 
work of an original and critical scholar. The temper with which 
the history of philosophy should be studied finds here admirable 
expression." — Professor George H. Palmer, Department of Phi- 
losophy, Harvard University. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



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